Got Mono?

March 29, 2006 by Oliver
Filed under: Programming, Technology 

Microsoft released the .NET platform. It was supposed to be an open standard that anyone could implement although in reality only Microsoft did. That’s all changed now as Mono is gaining momentum.

Mono is a cross-platform implementation of .NET complete with a execution environment (JIT compiler, garbage collector and so on) as well compilers for C# and VB.net. There are sections of it that a largely complete but all the important stuff is there.

The best thing about Mono is that it has stimulated development of .NET tools by people who normally wouldn’t touch Microsoft if they could avoid – specifically lots of open source developers. This includes the creation of some brand new programming languages such as Boo and Nemerle.

Normally a programming language with very few users is useless – libraries won’t exist and you’ll have to do lots from scratch and things are generally bad. However since every CIL language can use and extend features written (and compiled) in any other, this problem goes away. You can take a C# class and extend it in Boo and then put it in an ASP.NET page written in VB.NET.

An important part of Mono for cross platform use is the development of GTK#, a managed version of GTK that allows you to write cross platform windows applications with essentially a native look and feel.
Mono Project]]>

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  1. XForms - OliverBrown.me.uk on Thu, 30th Mar 2006 1:09 pm

    2. < ![CDATA[[...] d now things get a little strange&#8230;

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  2. Switching to a Mac is getting easier - Oliver Brown on Mon, 24th Apr 2006 8:18 pm

    3. [...] with just one computer. For developers this could be great. With the increasing success of Mono as a cross platform development environment, have a single computer to test everything on [...]

  3. ReactOS - Oliver Brown on Tue, 17th Oct 2006 1:21 pm

    4. [...] href=”http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2006/09/18/mythtv-better-than-media-center/”&gt;MythTV and Mono has led me to a few interesting things regarding Linux and operating systems. One of the m [...]

  4. More Maemo Mono - Oliver Brown on Tue, 13th Mar 2007 12:42 pm

    5. < ![CDATA[[...]

    There is now a single click installation route for getting Mono on the Nokia 770 and Nokia N800. Basically it sets up installation repositories and instal [...] ]]>

  5. Language learning app is back on - Oliver Brown on Tue, 17th Apr 2007 9:49 pm

    6. [...] work I&#8217;m using System.Windows.Forms I&#8217;m using Gtk# so it can hopefully run on Mono (and therefore Linux, Mac OS etc). The biggest problem I have is actually playing the audi [...]