Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
I'm still trying to fathom out what it is. (I think) I know it's pretty much the only way to develop C# apps in Linux but when I look at the class reference, what am I looking at?? It says it supports Java, C#, Boo and others so does the class reference refer to all of those languages or what? If it does, that's pretty damn cool for cross-platform development.
Excuse my ignorance, but having a dislike for working in Windows I don't really know much about .NET. Is it a way to develop in various languages all around a common framework provided support has been implemented?
Pretty much. .Net was meant to function similar to Java's virtual machine except that after the first run it's fully compiled to the local machine. It also makes it easier to use modules written in other languages because it, for the most part, is boiled down to the same CLR code.
Ah I see. I was just thinking about how Java could have improved the speed of their VM by having it compile right down to machine code (and cached) after it is first run on the end-user's machine. Sounds like .NET were already doing that
You're looking at it for the same reason that I have books on Cold Fusion, C#.NET, Flash, etc (looking to add a few Java books soon)... you are not some hobbyist script kiddie but a true to form programmer (or at the very least a professional web developer).