Re: Ada and .NET

[gerhard.nospam@bigfoot.de (Gerhard Häring)]

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:41:54 GMT, Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
>In article <uvgkrpgoe.fsf@wanadoo.fr>, Pascal Obry says...
>>I'm wondering if there is an Ada compiler that will support the 
>>Microsoft .NET platform ? Does somebody knows ?

I not known to be a Microsoft fan, but I can try to summarize my limited
knowledge about this matter. .NET is, among others:

- MSIL: Microsoft Intermediate Language (Java bytecode)

- CLS: (Common Language Specification): What a compiler/interpreter runtime
  must implement (types, exceptions must inherit from System.Exception, for
  example, ...). This enables language interoperability.

- a JIT for the MSIL

- a lot of stuff I don't care much about, like web services

.NET is also:
- a better COM/ActiveX/DCOM (no need to register controls, just copy them in a
  directory)
- Java done right (equally suited for all languages, perhaps better JIT
  performance) Java was around much longer, so MS could learn from Java's
  shortcomings

What I am pretty enthusiastic about is that the MSIL/CLS will enable real
integration between all languages. You can throw an exception in language A and
catch it in language B. Apart from the Microsoft languages, there are IIRC
implementations for Mercury, Haskell, Python, Perl, Eiffel, COBOL.

>Other that a PR platform, what exactly is ".NET"?

>Does it have a spec available somewhere that compiler writers can write to?

The C# language and the CLI (Common language infrastructure; = MSIL + CLS, see
below) are submitted to ECMA.

>If someone ported gcc to it, then a Gnat port could be done. Someone will
>probably do that if it ever becomes a viable platform. But my understanding of
>the GNU front is that they mostly see the whole concept as evil, and are thus
>focusing on cloning it (in a freer context of course). The project is ".GNU". (
>http://www.dotgnu.org )

Ximian (the people behind GNOME) have announced their open-source
implementation of .NET technologies a few days ago.

http://www.go-mono.com/

Gerhard
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