Tag: busted

There are a lot of negative myths about .net which people tend to use to favor the traditional languages like C++ above .net. I’ve busted the ones I read frequently:

• The GC is really slow
  malloc is way slower! The Garbage Collect of .net actually is faster than any Unmanaged code for it nows whether a value is a reference (pointer) and therefore can move objects in the memory. The GC puts objects of about the same age (generation) close to eachother in the memory. Objects tend to refer and use objects in the same generation. The processor itself doesn’t directly load a value from the memory but loads a whole block of a few KiloBytes in the Cache. When the processor directly caches all the objects which one object uses it just runs a lot faster for working from the cache is a lot faster than recaching different parts of the memory over and over again which happens with unmanaged languages which just put objects where there is free space.
• Interpreting that stupid Intermediate Language is damned slow
  .Net doesn’t interpret its IL, it compiles and optimizes IL runtime
• Compiling runtime is very slow anyways
  (That compiling a C++ is slow doesn’t mean that .Net is slow) It saves a lot of time for compiling at runtime allows great optimalisations like getting rid of unreachable code and inlining depending on the current runtime variables. Also operations can be compiled with processor specific optimalisations from one IL source. Most of the resource intensive compiling is done at the startup of the application, it is done while the program is running too but that really makes it a lot faster instead of slower
• If I write assembly myself it will be way superior to anything .Net can generate
  .Net can’t make all the optimalisations possible for it would take longer to analyse code than the optimalisation would gain. But usualy it creates still very optimised code. The big problem with writing very optimised assembly yourself is that the most optimised code is very processor specific and would be very hard to port, and even worse to maintain. Wanting to add one little extra feature could let you rewrite the whole code again. (Yes I indeed have made programs with assembly). Languages which avoid this a bit like C++ still require you to make a different build for every specific processor when fully optimising. Also it is nearly impossible to debug fully optimised unmanaged code but in .Net it still provides you with at least the functionname in which it has happened with the offset (try to accomplish that with C++ in release mode)
• The runtime is soooo damned big, it sucks
  20 Mb’s isn’t a lot. It only has got to be downloaded once, and the .net framework is in Windows Update so everyone who updates his computer would have it installed by now. Usualy there is room enough on your software installation CD to include .net, it is more than worth those 20 mb. Also languages like C++ require certain runtimes which arent that cooperative. Does ‘DLLHell’ ring a bell?
• The .net library naming SUCKS
  Yeah.. its naming is different than what MFC uses. At least the naming is very consistant which is way more important than ‘nice naming’, although when seeing some C++ API names used I still wonder why someone could prefer that above the clear .Net naming
• The .net library itself sucks
  Really? Like what? What can’t it do?
• You can’t use API calls like CreateFile
  Now I can’t…
  [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]public static extern IntPtr CreateFile(string lpFileName, uint dwDesiredAccess, uint dwShareMode, IntPtr lpSecurityAttributes, uint dwCreationDisposition, uint dwFlagsAndAttributes, IntPtr hTemplateFile);
  … now I can!
• .Net sucks cause it is Microsoft
  Yeah, so what. .Net is a ECMA standard so you are pretty free to use it, and if there is a catch then that one hasn’t been exploited yet for on linux people are happily using mono to run .net stuff