Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 6th Oct 2008 10:37 UTC, submitted by John Mills
The Mono project has released Mono 2.0. As most of you will know, Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. The 2.0 release comes packed with new features, the main ones being the compiler upgrade to C# 3.0 with support for LINQ, as well as the inclusion of ADO.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 and System.Windows.Forms 2.0. The release notes detail all the changes and new features.
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Member since:2007-07-13
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
The Linear IR branch is poised to make it into Mono 2.2 and is already as much as 30% faster than Mono 2.0 and there are lots more optimizations that can be done (and indeed, just last week SIMD optimizations were implemented which increase the performance even more).
That is excellent news. Do you have a link to any benchmarks ? (especially against JRE 1.6u10).
Mono is also fully open source.
As far as waivers from Sun, I am unaware of these. Could you provide a link to these waivers?
I have never seen nor heard of any such waivers before.
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/legal/license.html
See section 2. That is a patent grant for all implementations of the Java specification (and you don't have to ask Sun for permission to use it). However you don't have the right to call it "Java" unless you pass Sun's compatibility tests (since it wants to avoid fragmentation). Unfortunately it doesn't look like Microsoft will ever do this for .NET
This is all subjective, and let's not forget that Mono can continue even if Microsoft moves to something else next week, next month, next year, or next decade.
Mono is, after-all, a Free Software project that anyone can continue to maintain. It is not in any way dependent upon the life span of Microsoft's .NET just as C in Linux has been in use long after much of the Windows world switched to C++.
Completely true. What you're missing is that while Mono would soldier on as soon as there is fragmentation then adoption would be split. While it is not absolutely necessary to avoid this (after all, part of the point of Free Software is the 'right to fork'), this really dissipates developer effort and confuses users. It should be avoided for practical reasons.
Despite my preference for Java I'd like to thank you once again all your efforts with Mono (the community still needs it). It's nice to have choice.
Edited 2008-10-06 21:17 UTC
Member since:2007-06-21
"
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
The Linear IR branch is poised to make it into Mono 2.2 and is already as much as 30% faster than Mono 2.0 and there are lots more optimizations that can be done (and indeed, just last week SIMD optimizations were implemented which increase the performance even more).
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
The Linear IR branch is poised to make it into Mono 2.2 and is already as much as 30% faster than Mono 2.0 and there are lots more optimizations that can be done (and indeed, just last week SIMD optimizations were implemented which increase the performance even more).
That is excellent news. Do you have a link to any benchmarks ? (especially against JRE 1.6u10). "
There were a couple of benchmarks that the JIT developers have been using for comparison purposes. They've been using the Debian Language Shootout benchmark programs, the Portable.NET benchmark and some others. The "Benchmark Results" section towards the bottom of the page I linked to earlier names the benchmarks used and what the performance improvements are for those different tests.
"
Mono is also fully open source.
As far as waivers from Sun, I am unaware of these. Could you provide a link to these waivers?
I have never seen nor heard of any such waivers before.
Mono is also fully open source.
As far as waivers from Sun, I am unaware of these. Could you provide a link to these waivers?
I have never seen nor heard of any such waivers before.
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/legal/license.html
See section 2. That is a patent grant for all implementations of the Java specification (and you don't have to ask Sun for permission to use it). However you don't have the right to call it "Java" unless you pass Sun's compatibility tests (since it wants to avoid fragmentation). Unfortunately it doesn't look like Microsoft will ever do this for .NET
" This is very interesting, I had not known about this before.
Thanks for the link, I'll have to read it more carefully later.
"
This is all subjective, and let's not forget that Mono can continue even if Microsoft moves to something else next week, next month, next year, or next decade.
Mono is, after-all, a Free Software project that anyone can continue to maintain. It is not in any way dependent upon the life span of Microsoft's .NET just as C in Linux has been in use long after much of the Windows world switched to C++.
This is all subjective, and let's not forget that Mono can continue even if Microsoft moves to something else next week, next month, next year, or next decade.
Mono is, after-all, a Free Software project that anyone can continue to maintain. It is not in any way dependent upon the life span of Microsoft's .NET just as C in Linux has been in use long after much of the Windows world switched to C++.
Completely true. What you're missing is that while Mono would soldier on as soon as there is fragmentation then adoption would be split. While it is not absolutely necessary to avoid this (after all, part of the point of Free Software is the 'right to fork'), this really dissipates developer effort and confuses users. It should be avoided for practical reasons. "
That all assumes that things fork, though, which wouldn't necessarily happen. (hopefully it wouldn't, actually).
Ideally, the continuation of Mono would remain compatible with the specified portions of .NET and Mono would just be extended (via extension methods for the core and new libraries/compiler features that do not break existing code).
Despite my preference for Java I'd like to thank you once again all your efforts with Mono (the community still needs it). It's nice to have choice.
Choice is indeed good to have
And thank you for your gratitude for our work, it is very much appreciated!
Member since:2005-07-07
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
Mono still has a long way to go, from the looks of things. http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=...
Java is up to 6.9 times faster and is on average twice as fast. Granted, they use the -server flag which turns on much more aggressive optimizations hence the much higher performance and larger memory consumption. Nevertheless, there is still a huge delta between Mono and Java.
Member since:2007-06-21
"
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
Mono still has a long way to go, from the looks of things. http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=allâ©...
Java is up to 6.9 times faster and is on average twice as fast. Granted, they use the -server flag which turns on much more aggressive optimizations hence the much higher performance and larger memory consumption. Nevertheless, there is still a huge delta between Mono and Java. "
You are comparing Java6 -server with, at best, Mono 2.0.0 (hard to tell because Mono 1.9 also reported 2.0.0 afaik), the optimizations are happening in the post-2.0 code base (as I mentioned earlier). If you compare Java6 -client (which is the default) against Mono, they are actually neck-and-neck, possibly with Mono even coming out ahead.
Note also that raw speed isn't the only factor, Mono consistently uses a lot less memory than Java. For one of those tests, Java uses more than 10x the amount of memory than Mono uses.
But yes, you are correct in saying that Mono still has a ways to go if you want to compare Java6 -server with Mono (which doesn't have any special "server" optimizations).
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"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.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
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."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
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."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"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."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2007-06-21
1) It is very, very much faster (especially Java 1.6u10 which accelerates all graphics operations)
Example:
http://blogs.sun.com/jag/entry/current_state_of_java_for
http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00312039/en
Mono has improved in performance quite a lot since 1.2.6 and is quickly gaining ground on Java6-server, especially with the new Linear IR branch which you can read about at http://www.mono-project.com/Linear_IL
The Linear IR branch is poised to make it into Mono 2.2 and is already as much as 30% faster than Mono 2.0 and there are lots more optimizations that can be done (and indeed, just last week SIMD optimizations were implemented which increase the performance even more).
Mono is also fully open source.
As far as waivers from Sun, I am unaware of these. Could you provide a link to these waivers?
I have never seen nor heard of any such waivers before.
Thanks for the compliment ;-)
This is all subjective, and let's not forget that Mono can continue even if Microsoft moves to something else next week, next month, next year, or next decade.
Mono is, after-all, a Free Software project that anyone can continue to maintain. It is not in any way dependent upon the life span of Microsoft's .NET just as C in Linux has been in use long after much of the Windows world switched to C++.