Who owns C#?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sathyaish
  • Start date Start date
Nick Hounsome said:
I'm sorry, I don't seem to be communicating my point - I'll try again:

It is possible to have C++ without a standard library (except for type_info
etc) - I've used it myself for embedded work. It is NOT possible to have C#
without System.Object, System.String, System.MulticastDelegate etc.
Click to expand...

That's true. However, the exact nature of those types is only very
partially described by the C# spec.

What ties C# more tightly to the CLI is various guarantees about
garbage collection, construction, try/finally behaviour etc. Anyone
wanting to write an environment to support C# from scratch is likely to
end up with something very similar to the CLI, I suspect. (It would be
interesting to see what the barriers to C# being compiled directly to
native code are. I don't think there are many requirements for
reflection etc, for instance.)
I may have been a bit lax in my use of framework/library/CLI but my point
remains that however you define it there is a mutual dependency between
these things and C# that doesn't exist between C++ and its standard
libraries.
Click to expand...

There do indeed have to be a few types available in order to support
C#.
 
Jon Skeet said:
That's true. However, the exact nature of those types is only very
partially described by the C# spec.
Click to expand...

I know and I'm not really comfortable about it. It feels like C# itself is
incompletely specified.
 
Nick Hounsome said:
I know and I'm not really comfortable about it. It feels like C# itself is
incompletely specified.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean. On the other hand, the more that *is* specified,
the tighter it's bound to other things. At least *most* of the
behaviour of C# is well-specified, compared with things like:

a = a++;

in C/C++ :(
 
Off topic - does anyone know why Outlook Express just presented this to me
as a new post despite the fact that I read and replied yesterday?

I keep getting this problem with news and it is most annoying.
 
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