Ive been evaluating Mono/C# for a few weeks now and
am generally impressed by what I see.
My group works currently in the C/Linux world where we
develop near real-time scientific application software.
Im looking at C#/Mono because:
a) Another
group at our company uses C# / Windows and they rave about it.
b) Id
like to bring get my group using something more modern then C.
c) It would be
nice if the two groups use the same development language to encourage code
reuse.
I have two questions.
The first is what are there any things I need to worry about
that would be difficult to do in the Mono/C# world that are fairly easy and
standard in the C world? Note we have a distributed environment where
most of the programs are fairly small. The programs typically perform a
specific function (e.g. ingest the data, or run an algorithm on it) and then
pass it on to the next program. Data is passed in a number of ways, but
mainly through file sharing and pipes. We often use shell scripts to
control the flow of data and the programs to do the actual work. In
addition, we have fair number of existing C functions that I wish not to
duplicate (at least not initially) but I believe I can incorporate them using
SWIG.
Secondly, Im slightly concerned that at some point
down the road (say 3 5 years) Mono, for whatever reason, will no longer
be supported. From what Ive seen so far, Mono is a solid project
with a strong following of core programmers supporting it and I see no reason
why it might fade away. But I dont have a good feel for how many
people are using it and if that number is growing from year to year or if it
has started to stagnate, i.e. has Mono hit critical mass?
Any feedback to either question would be most appreciated.
Steve
___
Mono-list maillist - Mono-list@lists.ximian.com
http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
