Who owns C#?

[Sathyaish]

Who owns the language C#? I'm not talking about the compiler, but about
the language? Who owns it - Microsoft or the ECMA? I see there are two
specifications to each version:

1. One that comes out from Microsoft; and
2. Another that is a follow up from ECMA TC39 (ECMA-334) that is
revised after every release from Microsoft.

What's the deal?

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Nick Hounsome <Ne**@NickHouns ome.Me.Uk> wrote:

There are certainly strong enough ties to make it unlikely that anyone
will ever compile to non-IL/non-CLI, but the specification doesn't
absolutely require it.
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.Multicas tDelegate etc.

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.

There do indeed have to be a few types available in order to support
C#.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.co m>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Nick Hounsome]

"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <sk***@pobox.co m> wrote in message
news:MP******** *************** *@msnews.micros oft.com...

Nick Hounsome <Ne**@NickHouns ome.Me.Uk> wrote:

> There are certainly strong enough ties to make it unlikely that anyone
> will ever compile to non-IL/non-CLI, but the specification doesn't
> absolutely require it.

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.Multicas tDelegate etc.

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

I know and I'm not really comfortable about it. It feels like C# itself is
incompletely specified.

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Nick Hounsome <Ne**@NickHouns ome.Me.Uk> wrote:

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

I know and I'm not really comfortable about it. It feels like C# itself is
incompletely specified.

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++ :(

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.co m>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Nick Hounsome]

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.

"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <sk***@pobox.co m> wrote in message
news:11******** **************@ u72g2000cwu.goo glegroups.com.. .

Nick Hounsome wrote:

<snip>

The .NET Framework is not specific to C# but C# IS specific to the .NET
framework

That's not true on two levels:

1) The .NET framework is just one implementation of the CLI spec. Mono
is another, for instance.

2) C# is specific to "frameworks similar to the CLI" - it must work in
a broadly similar way in order to support the C# semantics, and it must
have the types that C# specifically requires (and those types have to
work in broadly the same way). However, it would be possible for that
not to be a CLI. For instance, it's not inconceivable that someone
could write a C# compiler which compiled to native code instead of IL -
or to a different type of intermediate language.

There are certainly strong enough ties to make it unlikely that anyone
will ever compile to non-IL/non-CLI, but the specification doesn't
absolutely require it.

Jon

[Ole Nielsby]

Nick Hounsome <Ne**@NickHouns ome.Me.Uk> wrote:

I keep getting this problem with news [...]

Probably an issue with the news server. Try news.microsoft. com
for the ms newsgroups.