C# and .NET's Sudden Ubiquity

I know it would never happen, but what would have been really sweet is if they actually ported Visual Studio itself over to OS X and Linux.

While I haven't run a Microsoft product on my home computer since 1997, during a 3 year stint as a C# developer at work I was completely floored at how good Visual Studio was at what it does. Things may have changed since then though (it was 2010 when I last used it), but I would think that a port could further their strategy.

I'd rather use Eclipse.

Personally, I find KDE's Kate just fine for most coding... I had to use Visual Studio for X86 Assembly. Way too overblown... would have way preferred doing Assembly on a Linux box...

@frankiej Not sure that will happen.

This likely ties in with the earlier "MS loves Linux" news items.

What MS is doing is turning Linux into middleware in their Azure cloud service.

Similarly they are expanding Office for Android and iOS, but it is tied back to a Microsoft account, Office 365 and Onedrive.

In essence, they are reusing their old play book from when Exchange replaced Netware, or the browser war that was as much about getting IIS as THE intranet server.

This smells a lot like the "Embrace phase" of the well known Microsoft E^3 strategy.

I'm with Penguinist on this one.

And what about .NET patents?

If FOSS developers are seduced into developing in a major way on top of the .NET platform, will we end up with another "Android scenario" where Microsoft brings forward an array of patents and demands compensation for our infringement?

If Microsoft really wants to demonstrate that they are operating in good faith here, they will open .NET patent rights along with the .NET sources.

Quoting:And what about the .NET patents?

Take a look at the verbiage here -> https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/PATENTS.TXT . Here is some relevant text:

Quoting:Microsoft Patent Promise for .NET Libraries and Runtime Components Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates ("Microsoft") promise not to assert any .NET Patents against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, or distributing Covered Code, as part of either a .NET Runtime or as part of any application designed to run on a .NET Runtime.

If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in any claim in a lawsuit alleging direct or contributory patent infringement by any Covered Code, or inducement of patent infringement by any Covered Code, then your rights under this promise will automatically terminate.

Quoting:I know it would never happen, but what would have been really sweet is if they actually ported Visual Studio itself over to OS X and Linux.

Funny, I've used Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010 at work. I've never quite warmed up to it. IMHO, they should rename "intellisense" to "stupidisense" or "dumbassasense". Type even one letter into the editor, and V.S. is popping up a prompt with its idea of what that should mean. Usually it's laughably wrong, but by damn you're going to see it. That is compounded by the times where the auto-complete alters what I just typed and turns it into something that won't even compile. I mean seriously, what I had was correct, you changed it to something else, then you complain that it's wrong!

The first thing I do after getting a new V.S. version is I immediately start DDG to find a way to turn off all the so called "help".

I'd rather use Emacs.

And I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Vim user.