Mono For The Win?
I’m still trying to absorb the possible ramifications from the Novell / Microsoft announcement. While there is every possibility that nothing will come from this, if it is instead Microsoft’s long-awaited acceptance of Mono, then this could be a very significant part of both companies’ futures. I have argued in the past that Mono is a critical part of Microsoft’s potential cross-platform future, and this announcement seems to suggest that they may see it that way, too.
So, ignoring the many juicy complexities, let me pick on one that I haven’t seen mentioned yet: What of XAML? I think it’s a real win for Microsoft if programmers can use .NET for all their needs, be they command-line utilities on the server or GUI apps for customers. This could encourage uptake of .NET, while creating a stage on which both Microsoft and Novell will be competing on the more genuine bases of who provides the better platform for a given technology. For so long the Microsoft suite of software has been disjoint from, well, everybody else. This has made comparison difficult, and many skills not as transferable as one would wish. Now there is a real possibility for the more apples-to-apples comparisons of
- On which platform do I most like to develop my .NET applications?
- On which platform do I most like to run my .NET applications?
To throw something out there, it’s entirely possible that we will see some programmers choosing to develop on Windows (thanks to Visual Studio) and deploy on Linux (thanks to cost, etc.).
But back to my question, if .NET is to become a truly cross-platform technology, there needs to be a better answer to GUI construction. Just as Mono’s SWF implementation is coming up to speed, Microsoft is moving to WPF, which Miguel is none too fond of. Perhaps this is a sign that WPF/E won’t be overly crippled, or perhaps this is an opportunity for the Mono camp to offer something new that could actually gain some penetration on the Windows side of the equation. Here’s hoping this all ends up being a fraction as interesting as it could be.
