Need help to decide to learn C# or not

Hi Erwin,

If you had just looked around a bit, you would have easily found answers to your qu and wouldn't need to ask some of tehse fundamental things. Anyways here are some answers:

1) Is it a compiled language or is it interpreted?
C# is compiled. You need a csharp compiler [csc.exe] which is freely downloadable with the .NET SDK.

2) What is its relationship to ASP .NET?  I hear about the 2 together a lot.  Do I have to learn both?
C# and ASP.NET are two different things. ASP.NET is for web programming. ASP.NET lets you seprate the UI from the code. The code part si written separately in what is called the code behind from the html part. Codebehind can be written in any language supported by the .NET platform. [C# is one of them]

3) I hear that web apps can be written with C#, but can it be used to write stand alone apps as well?  And client server apps also?
Yes, sure C# is used for such apps.

4) I hear C# is Microsoft's version of Java after their attempt with J++.  How does it compare to Java in performance, speed of development, ease of learning, enterprise capability, security, etc?  I ask this because I'm thinking of learning either C# or Java so knowing the pros and cons of both will help me decide.

Lots of differences. Superficially they appear identical, but the internal GC algorithms to the nature of compilation/interpretaion is different. C# is compiled, so it wins in terms of speed and performance over java.
Ease of learning - both should be ok since you are from the C++ background.

5) Will a C# app run on non-Microsoft platforms like Unix, Mac?
Yes it will run on Unix and Mac OS.

6) Is it low level (powerful) enough to use for game development such as action games with lots of animation or should I use C and C++ for this?

It depends, but if you are very concerened about performance then C++ would be my choice over Java and C#.

HTH,
Dolly

1) Is it a compiled language or is it interpreted?

C# compiler converts C# code to Intermediate Language (MSIL), this is similar to Assembly, but relatively high-level. C# exe file (which contains MSIL code) is not true executable file. MSIL is converted to actual executable code when C# exe file is loaded by .NET Framework - this is called just-in-time compilation.
C# code used in WEB pages (ASP) is interpreted.

6) Is it low level (powerful) enough to use for game development such as action games with lots of animation or should I use C and C++ for this?

DirectX is available in C#. But C++ still has better performance.

"C# code used in WEB pages (ASP) is interpreted." - C# is compiled even if it is written as code-behind of a ASP.NET application. So saying that it is interpreted is wrong.

"C# compiler converts C# code to Intermediate Language (MSIL), this is similar to Assembly, but relatively high-level. C# exe file (which contains MSIL code) is not true executable file. MSIL is converted to actual executable code when C# exe file is loaded by .NET Framework - this is called just-in-time compilation. "
While this is true, only the first time you run the C# assembly it takes time, from then on the execution is faster [its output is cached]. You may want to write simple sample proggie to see this. And JIT is just an option.

This article contains all details JIT:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/dotnetperftechs.asp

See:
The JIT
The Basics
When Does Code Get JITed?
Myth: JITed Programs Execute Slower than Precompiled Programs
JIT-Only Optimizations
Precompiling Code (Using ngen.exe)

C# is not real executable and not pure interpreted langauge. This is other technology, which has both features.

An important point about c# is that it is just ONE of the languages supported by the CLR, as you already have COBOL experience you might like to take a look a NetCobol From Fujitsu. Learning CLR and CTS is probably more important than you language of choice. Assemblies created in one language should interact seemlessly with other assembleys created in another.

http://www.adtools.com/products/windows/netcobol.html

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2002/June/WelcomeCobolNet.asp

If you were thinking about creating action games with a lot of graphics, C# is a better choice over Java....  but still not the best choice.  I would have to go with classic C++ for that one (c++.net is nice, but it is still compiled to MSIL and you can't necessarily do all the pointer arithmetic in C++.net like you can with classic C++.


That being said, you could develope your game engine in C++ and then code the rest of the game in C#

Web apps written in ASP.NET will work on any platform because the compilation is done on the server and IIS just returns HTML.

By the way, as was said above, C# syntax is the same as ASP.NET syntax. ASP.NET just has some web related extras like Response, Request, Session, etc.

gregoryyoung>

In reference to .Net speed Vs. Java Speed...

I read somewhere (I'll have to find the source) that both Java and .Net are compiled into some kind of Intermediate language (IL).  Which is just a step or two above machine code... kind of like compiling it to an assembler type language.

At anyrate, I had read that at execution time, .net coverts all code from MSIL to machine code for each dll (er... or something like that), where as Java interprets each line of IL code as it is being executed.  So Java will execute faster for very small programs where .Net will execute faster for medium to large scale programs.

I'll find the source... I'm sure it was on one of MS's propaganda web sites touting .net.

TAD

You are correct on the IL (byte code)

Java can either be interpreted or JIT the way .net is ... in fact JIT was around for Java long before .net came out.

Greg

http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/jit/

Performance:


Java faster than C# in TCP socket performance
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/rgrimm/one.world/csharp/network.html

MS Propaganda - C# faster than Java for a full app.
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/petshop.aspx

Sun Propaganda - Java 1,000's of times faster than any other language
http://www.javaperformancetuning.com/news/qotm028.shtml


Also on one of the web sites someone was complaining that performance metrics were taken using Java's BigDecimal class to compare to C# large number class.   BigDecimal is a crappy class to begin with, not very usefull, almost never used and it was implemented badly.  (At least those were the arguments).

Ultimately, as far as speed goes... a lot has to do with the developer's skill.... and then of course, using the right tool for the job.  Use C or C++ for your game engines and then build the front end in Java or C#.  Just like Perl should be used for string manipulation...  

or awk :)

ok ignore the petshop article ... or step into a religious war ... this makes BSD vs linux look like a small skirmish :)

Hi Folks,

In defense of seeming to be lazy and asking all these questions in this forum, I have done some research on some of these questions already and have been getting conflicting information.  Hence the need to ask them again to all you experts on this web site.  For example, my question on whether C# is compiled or not.  I suppose I should have refined the question to ask," Does the compiler compile it completely to machine code or does it go halfway to MSIL?".  Well, now I know the answer.

Thanks a lot for all your answers!  They were all very helpful.

Erwin

Hi GregoryYoung,

"Java has JIT as well so I am curious what  you are talking about ??"
To quickly point two differences:
1. C# can have real pointers, you could work with memory addresses, increment them, move around in memory etc. You could force the GC not to collect these pointer objects - tell me how you would do that in java if there was such a need.
2. The GC algorithms are different. Earlier versions of java worked on reference count basis, where if A had a ref to B and B a ref to A, then even though the two references couldn't be accessed directly from the program in any way, they woudln't be cleaned up. Well, that has been just patched with a work around. Whereas the .NET GC assumes that all objects are to be garbage collected, It then marks out all objects that are being referenecd and leaves them out and collects everything else. That is the underlying algorithm, so superficially though things appear to be the same [like both are GC enabled], their internal implementation is quite different making one perform better than the other in many situations.
And you may want to take a look at some third party benchmarks: http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/

"Mail2Dolly: "5) Will a C# app run on non-Microsoft platforms like Unix, Mac?
Yes it will run on Unix and Mac OS." Have you tried this ???"

Yes download Rotor, [it comes with the C# compiler source code] - I have seen it work on windows and Free BSD. I don't have MacOS but I know it works there too. Of course you can't use windows specific namespaces like win32 registry etc and expect it to run on the other platforms. But, outside of these specific OS dependant libraries, things would work on these 3 OS'es.

The way .NET is built adding a new processor support is just a matter of converting the MSIL to the corresponding processor dependant machine code.

Dolly
http://dolly.thinkingms.com