Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Java vs MS Common Runtime

Author:David Rothgery
Posted:7/24/2000; 3:58:29 PM
Topic:Java vs MS Common Runtime
Msg #:18975 (In response to 18972)
Prev/Next:18974 / 18976

What's the chance of MS's runtime being available on other platforms. Mac? Linux?

Seems likely if MS sticks to its plans for making their runtime an ECMA standard and doesn't leave too many things out of the spec. On the Linux side, someone will eventually realize the advantages of being able to run any app built in Visual Studio.NET on Linux; given that and a complete spec, a Linux version of the runtime is darn near inevitable.

The Mac is probably the best bet for an 'official' port, simply because Microsoft writes a lot of Mac software, though I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an 'official' version of the 'compact' runtime for PalmOS.

Or third parties writing compatible runtimes?

Again, it depends on how complete the spec is, and how difficult it is to reverse engineer.

Is C++ (with home-rolled system class wrappers) still the only way to write code that's truly portable?

Another 'it depends' answer. I think Perl is rather portable for web development, and several other scripting languages are also available for most platforms. For standard GUI app development, there's always Perl/Tk, but platform-specific technologies tend to work better.

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