Tell me again why we need both .NET and Windows? Why can't Windows morph into the CLR?

Posted by le dorfier on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by le dorfier
Published on 2008-12-06T04:41:22Z Indexed on 2012/10/20 5:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 136

Filed under:

clr

The same way DOS morphed into Windows?

We seem to have ended up supporting and developing for three platforms from Microsoft, and I'm not sure where the boundaries are supposed to lie.

Why can't the benefits of the CLR (such as type safety, memory protection, etc.) be built into Windows itself?

Or into the browser? Why an entirely other virtual machine? (How may levels of virtual machine indirection are we dealing with now? We just added Silverlight - and before that Flash - running inside the Browser running inside maybe a VM install...)

I can see raw Windows for servers, but why couldn't there be a CLR for workstations talking directly to the hardware (or at least not the whole Windows legacy ball and chain)?

(ooppp - I've got two questions here. Let's make this - why can't .net be built into Windows? I understand about backward compatibility - but the safety of what's in .NET could be at least optionally in Windows itself, couldn't it? It would just be yet another of many sets of APIs?)

Factoid - I recall that one of the competitor architectures selling against MS-DOS on the IBM PC was UCSD-pascal runtime - a VM.

Related posts about clr

Loading/Executing CLR 2.0 assemblies in CLR 4.0

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Can the CLR 4.0 execute CLR 2.0 IL without the need for source code recompilation? >>> More
Declare a Nullable int (int?) using XAML

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am trying to bind a combo box to a property on my ViewModel. The target type is short? and I would like to have null be an option. Basically I would like the value of the first item in the combo box be {x:Null}. <ComboBox Grid.Row="9" Grid.Column="1" SelectedValue="{Binding Priority}"> … >>> More
IIS: 404 error on every file in a virtual directory.

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am trying to write my first WCF service for IIS 6.0. I followed the instructions on MSDN. I created the virtual directory, I can browse the directory fine but anything I click (even a sub-folder in that folder) gives me a 404 error. What am I missing that I can not access any files or folders?… >>> More
IIS: 404 error on every file in a virtual directory.

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am trying to write my first WCF service for IIS 6.0. I followed the instructions on MSDN. I created the virtual directory, I can browse the directory fine but anything I click (even a sub-folder in that folder) gives me a 404 error. What am I missing that I can not access any files or folders?… >>> More
A CLR-supporting browser (4 replies)

as seen on .NET 247 - Search for '.NET 247'
Microsoft, by seemingly ignoring the huge benefits of JIT compiling VMs on the browser and instead pushing Silverlight (which is pretty awesome though), is showing it STILL hasn't gotten the Web. (The fact that I can't seem to post on these newsgroups using Firefox (!!!) is yet another glaring example)… >>> More

Developer IT

Tell me again why we need both .NET and Windows? Why can't Windows morph into the CLR? - Developer IT

Tell me again why we need both .NET and Windows? Why can't Windows morph into the CLR?

clr

Related posts about clr

Loading/Executing CLR 2.0 assemblies in CLR 4.0

Declare a Nullable int (int?) using XAML

IIS: 404 error on every file in a virtual directory.

IIS: 404 error on every file in a virtual directory.

A CLR-supporting browser (4 replies)

Categories cloud