On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 4:11 PM, Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Seriously though - you can't be the only .Net fan out there so why isn't it being done?
Surely it doesn't need IBM to do it just as Python didn't originally. IBM was late to
the game with that.
From a technical standpoint, I suspect .NET Core is a bigger effort to
port than Python. And .NET Core is pretty new. Sure, .NET isn't new,
but .NET Core is a major refactoring of the original .NET, which was
highly Windows-specific. In contrast, Python is just one language, is
a relatively small language at that, and its reference implementation
has always been POSIX-centric (and specifically designed to be simple
to understand and maintain, rather than optimized for any particular
underlying platform).
I feel there are probably cultural issues at play as well. Python was
designed to be multiplatform, and has been roughly as successful as
Java in terms of meeting the write-once-run-anywhere ideal. It has
also seemed to attract a fair number of fanatical followers from
pretty early on, well before becoming mainstream. Meanwhile, Microsoft
has only recently begun to embrace other platforms (even later than
IBM). The whole concept of .NET on non-Windows is pretty foreign to a
lot of people, both fans and detractors of .NET alike. Even if someone
were to really, really love .NET the way the staunchest Python fans
love Python, they are most likely thinking "great, now I have the best
tools in the world to develop on Windows!"; not "how do I bring these
awesome tools to other platforms?".
As one measure of the level of fanaticism we're talking about: The
third-party Python port was to QSYS.LIB. With ILE C. (I don't know
exactly how far back ILE goes; maybe the original iSeriesPython even
used non-ILE C?) This is a noticeably greater undertaking than porting
to PASE. Yet it was done by one dedicated individual.
But I absolutely agree with you that (1) IBM was late with its Python
and (2) there is enough interest and enough value in the .NET Core
proposition that it *ought* to be ported to PASE, whether that's by
IBM or by some interested third party.
John Y.
midrange.com
