On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 11:44:05PM -0800, Christopher Smith wrote:
Well, C# is just a Java ripoff. That's nothing new.
I hate it when people say this. C# is a language in its own right, and distinct in lots of interesting ways. Java might well have a lot to do with the motivations for creating the language, but it is important and useful to evaluate each language in its own right.
I'd go so far as to say that C# really doesn't share a lot in common with Java, beyond some superficial syntactical things, and are both OO languages. Personally, I think the borrowed C syntax is what I like least about either language. I also think it largely responsible for the success, especially of Java. An experienced C or C++ programmer looks at Java and sees a superficial resemblance. Once they've dived into the language, they realize it is a completely different beast, but then they've already learned enough to keep going. Other languages that have tried to do new paradigms have had different enough syntax that it kept people away. Syntax is the most visible, and most superficial aspect of the language. With ocaml, one person got so annoyed at the syntax, that he wrote his own front end for the language. For a while, many other people were writing code in this revised syntax of the language. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Some languages allow the syntax of the language to be extended somewhat (usually adding arbitrary operators). I haven't found this to make for very readable code, though. Dave -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
