Mono Directions

Quite informative... Not.

What is so ugly about the others, besides not being your favorite language?

All of them have very well maintained bindings. Why not find out for yourself?

Well, mono is a framework for creating languages (this is a bit simplistic, but it's close enough to the truth), so you're properly thinking about C#, which is the main language in mono. I haven't worked with C#, but it seems like a nice language. But it isn't a scripted language (it's compiled) so if scripting is a must, you only have to choose between python and perl :-)

I think perl is rather easy to code with, but it's a very hard language to read. This makes (in my opinion) perl harder to debug and maintain.

python is a fairly easy to work with language, and it has great gnome support. So, that's what I'd go with, but choice of programming language is very personal, so other people will tell you otherwise...

Going with Python not only puts you arguably into a better language, but you are also sidestepping some potential legal issues that may rear their heads in the future that Novell and the Mono team have never been able to definnitely address in a binding way that assures your freedom now and in the future. Their best answer is "it *should* be okay".

And Intellij IDEA is much better than eclipse, with key bindings for navigation, better code generation, better editors and code inspection, without needing buggy third party plugins. IDEA is also very fast and written in swing, without the instability issues of SWT/Linux or Mac.

Java is memory hungry and the JVM startup time is annoying, i'll give you that. I also like C# properties and delegates (maybe I don't know enough about them), while unchecked exceptions are a guilty pleasure. The available IDE's in Java really take care of the warts in the language.

Oh, I suggest you try the available swing libraries: Jgoodies for look and feel, SwingX for better components.

Well java-gnome needs a lot of work, but still java is really a nice language, and not half as slow as you make it.
Personally I find eclipse very slow, and normally use netbeans. I'd really be nice if sun opened java, so some serious port could be made.

What have you against the native eclipse? I heard the original should be even slower.

Also there is no meaning in C# being faster than java, as all the negative talk has been about it using a Virtual Machine, but C# has one also.

I also think that just the fact that mono produces .exe files, should hold it miles away from gnome.

Personally I think, that a lot of python would be cool, but better implemented java would be nice also.

I personally don't care what language an application I need is written in, as long as it compiles or just runs. It's just a matter of fact the all Java applications I ever ran take a lot of time to load and slowly redraw.

All I ever heard from Java developers about it is "your computer is too old". Excuse me, but 1,6 Centrino and 512 Gb RAM doesn't count for old :)

If so, then something must be wrong with Java or maybe just with developers who use it.

--
Alexandre

Maybe, but I've only got 1gig Ram, and even with lots of java applications running at the same time (like ooo, eclipse, netbeans) I am far from having to swap.

I have been reading about Java and C# and the comments people made.

1) When one says all IDE's suck other than Eclipse or Eclipse is the only good one, let's say Eclipse is the only good one for free. I use both Slickedit, and X-Develop and they are great IDE's. Albeit not free.

2) C# is a better language, but Java a better library. The .NET API bites! Just look at the IO classes and you do not need look further. With respect to the Java language. Well getters and setters are dumb! The property solution from C# is very good.

3) C# and .NET apps can run fast or slow. It really depends how they are programmed. For example I use X-Develop (written in java) to write C# code. X-Develop is faster than Visual Studio 2005 written in C++. What this says is that X-Develop is well written and Visual Studio not, but then again this is not news, no?

4) The future is in something like C#, Java, Python, etc. C will always provide the underlying bindings, but above that it's all about a virtual machine.

How much does Microsoft pay you to astroturf Java performance myths all over this site?

Although, you probably just deny and tell me to get the facts...

> There are far better IDEs on Linux for other languages.

Not trying to start a flamewar, but I haven't found a better one for c++ and I've been looking. Anjuta is way to simplistic, and I'd rather not have to install kde just to get kdevelop.

Eclipse is annoying in it's utter slowness even on a high end machine(pentium m 1.8 + 1gig ram, well it's good for a laptop).

If you have any good recomendations I would be happy to try them out. I'm looking for an ide with code completion. Otherwise I just use vim.

> You have to go through hoops or configure special things in your kernel just to launch mono apps, which you don't have to do for Java.

FUD! I run tomboy f-spot and beagle without any special configuration. most java programs expect some sort of JAVA_HOME and a perticular jvm, I think mono and java being somewhat interpreted both have this problem.

Which is way different from requiring kernel config.

You don't require kernel configuration to run Mono apps anymore than you need it to run Java apps. All the Java apps I've seen running under Linux *all* do the same thing that mono apps do -- run from a script which sets various env variables and default params.
Check it out yourself before you post again.

In reality it breaks down like this:

Mono/C# = Good for scripters, simple folk and simple applications
Java = Good for people developing complex applications that need extreme stability, scalability and portability. Not so good for very simple desktop apps (take tomboy for example, was easy to develop in C#, would have taken longer in Java)
C/C++ = Good for people developing applications that need speed and a low foot print
Assembly = Good for people who need absolute speed and a minimal footprint

open source java can not be used in the "extreme stability" or "scalability" as it has yet to get the kind of work that has gone into the commercial one.

It's just a shame that compiling it only removes the need for a non-Free JVM. It doesn't appear it make it faster/less memory-hungry -- if anything, it's worse.

I'd tend to agree about java being memory hungry, but can you point to any numbers giving some evidence than compiling java doesn't help?