Singing Sharp

Like many, I grew up programming in C and C++ before moving into LAMP-land and Python, Perl, and PHP. But like that first car, first date, and first paycheck, everyone has a special memory of the first time they compiled gibberish into executable machine code.

Thanks to GCC, open source developers have never had any issues writing C or C++ code on a Linux platform. However, when Microsoft announced their .NET initiative and the intention to focus their efforts around C#, few people expected Microsoft to release a Linux client for their "platform-independent" development tool.

Fortunately, .NET's Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and the C# programming language are codified as ECMA (a non-profit standards body) and ISO international standards, which creates the possibility for independent implementations. The DotGNU project was started with huge fanfare to bring standards-compliant C# to Linux. Over the years, DotGNU has received less attention than the other .NET for Linux: the Novell-sponsored Mono project. Nevertheless, the project is still chugging along, and it is even finding some use in commercial applications.

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