The dot in dot NET

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When asked what .NET says to him about future directions for GNOME, de
Icaza replied:

	"What I wanted to do with GNOME was
	to close the gap between the proprietary software offering and the
	free software offering.

	We're not catching up on the desktop. With .NET,
	MS has figured out the next generation of development software. So it's
	worth looking at." He added: "If you're a developer, .NET has a lot of
	things that you're not going to find in Linux."

 Certainly, C# is similar to Java, but what de
Icaza found intriguing was that .NET was not targeted for a single
language. The problem with Java is, of course, that developers must
work in Java.

 As a development environment, .NET is language-agnostic. It allows
developers to program in whatever language they like.

	"In .NET, Microsoft
	has created the common language runtime (CLR), which is a way for
	languages to generate code that interoperates easily," said de Icaza.

	"You can have Visual Basic running in the same environment as C#, Fortan,
	Pascal, or whatever. You could create a class in C++ and pass it over
	to a C# object and then have it instantiated as a Visual Basic object.
	It's a programmer's dream come true."

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2001/07/09/icaza.html

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  Nickos Venturas
  "Smurf exterminator"