First, it's very portable.
Second, performance is as good or better than pretty much anything else that is not optimized C or C++.
Finally, there are many reasons to love C# beyond interfacing with MS technology. It's a very beautiful language, much nicer than Java used to be and in many respects better than even the latest Java language. And innovation continues: If you've worked with node.js for some time, you will see how ugly code becomes where everything is done using callbacks. C# just now introduced new syntax where you can basically write code in a linear way and the nesting of callbacks is done by the compiler.
Mono, I'm guessing you mean. Mono's not great for server applications, it's best used for desktop apps. If you want to write server apps, you need to be using the official Microsoft implementation. (Which is becoming the red-headed stepchild platform in Microsoft's strategy apparently?)
> Second, performance is as good or better than pretty much anything else that is not optimized C or C++
Fortran, Ada C, C++, ATS, Java, Scala, Common Lisp (SBCL), and Go.
List of things that aren't faster than C#, but are close enough to call it a wash:
Haskell, Ocaml, Clojure, Pascal, Racket
I'd say you have some choices if performance is an issue yet C#'s is acceptable.
>It's a very beautiful language, much nicer than Java used to be
No, yes. It's nicer than Java, it's not "very beautiful". Try working through the Little Schemer to see a beautiful language.
>And innovation continues: If you've worked with node.js for some time, you will see how ugly code becomes where everything is done using callbacks.
Bizarre strawman? What? I don't like Node.js either, but what's your point? A lot of languages that aren't C# have better concurrency idioms than Node. You know, like all of them that aren't C#.
> C# just now introduced new syntax where you can basically write code in a linear way and the nesting of callbacks is done by the compiler.
Yeah, uh, Scala has had this since forever. And Lisp. And Scheme. And Clojure. And C++. And Node.js (ugh).
For a C++ example, look at Tame/Tamer, SFSLite, etc.
For anything else, google "promises".
There is nil that is special about C#, it's a slightly nicer Java without a home or a stable implementation. If neither of those things matter to you and you wanted a Java++ that wasn't as ambitious or intellectually challenging as Scala, then you've found your language. Godspeed.
Your post is full of FUD, taste mixed with fact, and little incorrectnesses. Most notably, your post seems to imply that for C# to be worth something, it has to be the best at something. Yet, Scheme is a prettier language (taste, not fact), a whole bunch of languages already had continuations, a whole bunch of other languages are faster, and so on. C# is great because it's above-average good at all of these areas.
C# has one of the best standard libraries out there (well documented, rather well designed, batteries-included, etc)
C# has a decent set of relatively modern language constructs, yet is easy enough to learn for a very large group of programmers.
C# is faster than most (but not all) languages sporting a comparable set of high-level features.
C# has excellent tool support, and was designed for enabling such tool support, making refactoring and code navigating easier than in any other language except Java.
C# has a large ecosystem and user-base, making it easy to find answers to problems and components that solve problems not covered by its standard library.
None of these items, in isolation, are special. Java arguably has a stronger ecosystem, but is a less powerful language. C++ is faster, Scheme is more elegant (according to many), and so on. But I know of no other language that has all these areas covered so well simultaneously. Scala comes close, but is arguably more difficult to learn, and lacks on the ecosystem area (not in terms of library support, but in terms of best practices and large user base). This might change, which would be lovely.
All other languages you mentioned strongly lack on at least one of the above-mentioned aspects.
I'm not saying that C# is god's gift to mankind and the only good thing out there. I'm only saying that you're dismissing it too easily.
There are sufficient people out there who really like this combination of features to support a vibrant open source community. Which is why this community exists. Why dismiss something that exists and works well?
It is, unless you come from Java (using IDEs like NetBeans or Eclipse), in which case it's kind of comparable (but different). IMHO.
In fact, if MS were ever to make .NET/C# legacy like some people seem to believe "WinRT allows horribly HTML5 apps" implies, I bet JetBrains would just bolt ReSharper onto IDEA and off we all go.
if you've ever actually used Visual Studio 2010 or above, and compared it to Eclipse, you'd realize how sad Eclipse looks in comparison. I use both at work all the time. Nothing compares to VS.
I use both at work all the time, too. I tend to prefer VS, too, but there's some points where Eclipse really shines. Eclipse's continuous build, for example, is excellent. Your tests start immediately when so requested, where VS 2010 decides to first build all of the projects in the solution. Especially once the solution gets fairly sizeable, this becomes unproductive very fast. There's workarounds, but I don't want workarounds. I just want it to work immediately.
NCrunch [1] is a great help in that regard – auto-build and auto-test in the background while you work. I just wish I had codebases that were well-tested so that I could actually use it.
Your comment just tries to derail the discussion by bringing up Scheme or Lisp in a context where only languages are considered that are widely used in the industry. Otherwise, how could the word "abandon" possibly apply?
This language shootout has been criticized before. Except for optimized C and C++ there is no popular language (I'm talking about the performance that is due to the design of the language, _not_ a particular implementation. For example dynamic typing is necessarily slower.) that is faster than C#. Try unsafe C# and you know what I mean.
Bringing up Scheme here is entirely inappropriate. It's common wisdom that Lisp and Scheme are more beautiful, but this article is about a language that is supposedly "abandoned", because it may not be mainstream enough anymore at some point. If C# is abandoned, then what can you say about Scheme?
As far as node.js is concerned, it's not a strawman: In fact, the people who claim that MS abandoned C# think that they want to replace it by Javascript. MS even supports node.js in Azure.
"concurrency" is not the same as asynchronicity, which is what I was talking about. And promises are not even close what C# 5.0 tries to achieve. In fact, promises have been present since .NET 4.0.
Finally, please explain how Scala is "intellectually challenging". This is not my experience.
(throwaway account due to procrastination setting)
> Except for optimized C and C++ there is no popular language (I'm talking about the performance that is due to the design of the language, _not_ a particular implementation. For example dynamic typing is necessarily slower.) that is faster than C#.
Er, but you can't just completely disregard implementation, because it really matters in practice. You're not going to get a lot of adoption simply because your language is theoretically better/faster/...
In these language shootouts, Lua, a dynamically-typed language aimed at small size and simplicity, regularly beats out C#, because Lua has LuaJIT[+], which is a really good implementation, whereas C# for many people means Mono, which is at best an "OK" implementation.
It's the same as with algorithms: big-O complexity is obviously important, but it isn't everything; for real-world uses, the constant factors may make all the difference...
[+] The standard Lua implementation is also very good, but it's a more typical VM, and while very fast for a non-JIT VM, can't match LuaJIT in many cases.
In addition to skrebbel's excellent points, C# on the CLR is faster than Mono, and C# supports value types so in real world code that often gives it an advantage over Java. For example a List<int> in C# is a tightly packed array of integers, in Java it's a list of pointers to integers. In Java, you can in theory rewrite each collection class (hash map, hash set, tree map, tree set, list, etc.) for all primitive types (and pairs, and triples, etc. of primitive types), or write everything directly on top of primitive arrays (as is done on the shootout). In the real world for most code that's not practical and leads to unreadable/unmaintainable code.
Basically all the programs that use collections at all? Of the first 7 programs that I checked, 6 use primitive arrays, and N-body uses an array but that array contains a pointer type. Fannkuch-redux, meteor contest, fasta, spectral-norm, reverse complement, mandelbrot ... all use primitive arrays. A better question would be: which programs do NOT use primitive arrays? I'm not saying that these should be written using ArrayList or something, just that they are not very indicative of real world performance when people are more likely to use the collection classes.
That people use standard collection classes more often than in these benchmarks where they little used (if at all) is a big fat assumption?! There are going to be many situations where using a primitive array is not the right choice. When you need a hash table, a set or an expandable array, for example. If you are claiming that these benchmarks are indicative of the real world, you are claiming that collection classes are not used in the real world, since hardly any (if any) use the built in collections.
> aren't there also going to be many situations when the right thing to do is use an array?
Sure, with a language that has super slow boxing semantics....
Just look at BinaryTree. The benchmark would show a very different picture if it would compare Tree<Integer> implementations instead of allowing a primitive int.
It looks like Tame is a pre-processo that outputs C++, hardly a C++ language feature. I mean, more power to you if you like to use those, but that is hardly C++.
The Scala question seems to have too many caveats, you should read the comments as there is no full translation of the F# async translation in the stackoverflow question. The answer with the most question states "with some important features lost". The comments on the question and answers should be read as well.
You forgot to show us how Node.js is supposed to support async-like programming without callbacks. I suspect in a rush to enumerate a bunch of languages, you merely listed everything you could think of and hoped some of it would stick?
With respect to Lamina, that's just an example of a task on a separate thread being treated as an asynchronous result. It's entirely possible to use it to represent network communication or pretty much anything else.
This sample shows the startup cost of LLVM. It is not ideal for short-running tasks, as just JITing this code with LLVM increases the overhead for this test by 0.42 seconds on my machine (iMac, 2010).
Might be worth running this for a longer period of time, they will basically converge.
LLVM is great for HPC, when this startup cost is not a problem.
Sadly not lovely, because when I installed Mono 2.11.4 a couple of weeks ago, I forgot about "Compiling with stock LLVM is not supported, please use the Mono LLVM repo..."; and I guess when --llvm is used without LLVM being enabled, Mono does not give a warning message.
The Mono 3.0.0 measurements are made with LLVM enabled.
c# is easy to learn, easy to implement, and easy to handover, to a team, a junior etc.
It is easy to wrap up dev of an application in .net. Super easy. I've done some awesome things in c#, and love the language. Why, cause when it is easy to ship working software, what's better than that.
To be fair the shootout uses open source language implementations and runtimes. It could be that .NET is more performant than Mono (which is used in the tests), so that's not very objective view of what is possible with a C# implementation.
We cheat, because we are able to use the work of the brilliant hackers over at LLVM.
So in addition to Mono's code gen, you can opt into using LLVM, like this:
mono --llvm myBenchmark.exe
It take a lot longer to start, compared to Mono's fast-JIT, but for any long-running HPC, financial simulation or physics simulation, you can not get better than this.
The speed of LLVM, the safety and productivity of C# (or F#)
Theoretically, the CLR-VM should be able to reach better performance than the JVM, since it has value-types. Within the JVM an array of some objects is really an array of references, which is bad for your hardware caches and requires an additional pointer dereference. The question is how significant that is for non-numerical applications.
Theoretically, your sufficiently advanced compiler and/or JVM will figure out where they can replace objects by value types. So, theoretically, that does not matter.
The difference should be visible in practice, though. AFAIK, it is not really visible, though. That probably is because the JVM has been tuned longer.
I did criticize OP too, but you'll note that he made a point of saying that C# was nicer than Java. The fact that he isn't aware the JVM has more than just Java, is an issue I attempted to redress.
