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Comment by gesman | Hacker News Reader

If for nothing else - it shows MSFT's commitment to the language, to the platform and to the framework.

No, it shows MSFT's commitment to future revenue and profit. If they were really committed to the language, they would open-source it.

So the only way to be committed to a language is to open-source it?

In this day and age, yes. At least if you want it to succeed. MSFT knows this, too - they open-sources TypeScript.

Better closed and tidy then open and messy. Besides there is an open implementation for Mono if you fancy.

It's in no way in a worse place than, say, java. It would be nice if the CLR and Roslyn was open sourced, but I wouldn't make it a primary concern when choosing a platform for a project. The ecma standardization feels at least as important.

Right, but that's just because Oracle has been such a shitty owner of Java. However, at least Java is supported by more than 1 company on more than 1 platform; C# doesn't offer any real advantages over Java (other than some cosmetic language features).

Xamarin is one of the biggest backers of C#/.NET, and the reason .NET is probably the simplest way to create a 3-platform smartphone application today. You can even use F# for that which is even nicer than C# and open source. So the ecosystem has a few open source languages and several backing companies.

Ignorance is indeed bliss. Differences are not just skin deep, like generics where type erasure is used in java for instance. I suggest reading up on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_C_Sharp_and_Java#...

I know many of the differences. C# is a newer language, more novel VM, designed from start for multiple languages, C# has linq, unsafe code, unboxed structs, properties, events, delegates (Java now has lambdas), dynamic... But it's not fundamentally different, and offers exactly the same way of structuring applications.

It's almost as though they are a for profit company.

They are committed to the language because it makes them profit, yes. What did you expect from a company? A bunch of academics who are committed the language on its theoretical merits alone, even if it causes the company to hemorrhage money?

The kind of "commitment" that you refer to is one that results in perhaps wider acceptance (perhaps not), but /definitely/ will annihilate their existing strategy (lock-in).

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