This article presents results of an investigation of the usage of .NET on five versions of Windows. The operating system files for the first version of Windows tested, XP Pro with Service Pack 2 applied, did not use .NET at all. This is understandable because XP was released before .NET was first released. The next version of Windows was the PDC 2003 build of Longhorn. This has a similar number of unmanaged executable files as XPSP2 but it also had thirty five .NET assemblies. Amongst these assemblies were two services.
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Member since:2005-07-06
But still: if MS can not build against .NET 2.0 (because it is a moving target), why do they expect builders to code for 1.0 or 1.1 and later have to rebuild it for 2.0?? I still think Gonzalo has a point here.
Apparently the differences between 1.1 and 2.0 are so big that it is not trivial to go from 1.1 to 2.0.
Else MS own developers would have started coding in 1.1 and have a (near) trivial port 4 years later when the final 2.0 comes out
In the majority of cases, 1.0/1.1 apps would not have to be rebuilt against 2.0. That's not the issue at all. The issue is that WinFX and anything that took a dependency on it was dependent on .NET 2.0, which was currently in active development. WinFX uses many features that are specific to .NET 2.0. During the time of Vista's development, the APIs for both .NET 2.0 and WinFX were in constant flux. New features were being developed, and others were undergoing API changes based on feedback from MS' partners and the wider development community. It's hard to use something as a base when changes in the API and behavorial changes occur from build to build (which could be daily internally). This is concerning new functionality like partial types, iterators, generics, and new class libraries, not anything that involved .NET 1.x.
Member since:2005-07-06
In reference to .NET, from what it looks like, things have stablised, and 3.0 will be merely a move of extending the foundation through more libraries, and some enhancements at the compiler level, all in all, compatibility with 2.0 will be maintained.
As for WinFX; its a completely new API for programmers to target; no different to the transition from win16 to win32, but the tranisition is alot more radical.
What I do hope is that Microsoft does a good job evangelising the features in WinFX to win over companies, so as a result, we eventually start seeing software take full advantage of the features which Microsoft have included.
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Member since:
2005-07-08
"The platform they were selling was in final form and released (.NET v. 1.0 and 1.1). The platform they were building WinFX and Vista on was in development (.NET 2.0), but nice try."
But still: if MS can not build against .NET 2.0 (because it is a moving target), why do they expect builders to code for 1.0 or 1.1 and later have to rebuild it for 2.0?? I still think Gonzalo has a point here.
Apparently the differences between 1.1 and 2.0 are so big that it is not trivial to go from 1.1 to 2.0.
Else MS own developers would have started coding in 1.1 and have a (near) trivial port 4 years later when the final 2.0 comes out