So this is what is has come to.
Is this really a step forward for the mainstream developers out there?
@ DanW - Is this what has come to?
The word ‘mainstream’ is an interesting choice. In all sad honesty, NetMF has never been ‘mainstream’. NetMF has unique advantages and unique challenges, but I find it hard to argue that it was ever ‘mainstream’ when compared to Arduino, RaspberryPi, BeagleBone hardware or native (C/C++) coding.
What I think we are witnessing is the movement of GHI as a company into mainstream hw/sw platforms; and the migration of the Fez concepts in software and hardware onto those mainstream platforms. Played correctly, this will benefit both those platforms and GHI as a company.
With the NetMF changes mentioned by GHI, it sounds like we’ll see an infusion of new effort into the NetMF platforms, too. Enough to make it mainstream? That’s not clear yet.
C# is certainly mainstream if NETMF isn’t. And having to deal with mono in order to program a micro device in C# seems like an additional point of frustration for the “mainstream” developer.
But perhaps i am approaching this all wrong, maybe there are many advantages to the Linux/mono approach which is currently no illuminated to me.
And maybe much of my frustration is unfounded or simply overreaction. Perhaps stemming from the realizations of all that has been lost (time-wise and monetarily) into my endeavors of NETMF and Gadgeteer.
Yes, C# is definitely mainstream, and Mono is the only way to run C# on ARM-based Linux platforms until either the Samsung port of .Net Core to ARM is done or Win10 IoT runs on BB platforms.
@ mcalsyn - Or GHI makes a NETMF emulator for Linux that has access to the actual IO ports of the RPI or BBB.
@ Mr. John Smith - I actually don’t get the logic behind that one.
While a full hardware stack isn’t there today, to me, it makes a lot more sense to bring the hardware access to a modern compiled managed-language platform (Mono) than it does to bring an IL-interpreted stack to modern hardware (where you would still have to port/re-write the NetMF HAL anyway).
Personally, for my own projects, I am working to bring hardware access to Mono via a Windows.Devices type namespace so that I get the best of both worlds - compiled-language speed + full .net stack (including Forms, Qt, Gtk UI) + hardware access.
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@ Mr. John Smith - did you get remote debugging working? When I tried, VS complained that it could not start the .exe file on the OSD3358 for debugging.
@ RoSchmi - I did get remote debugging working. I should start making videos of these. Now I don’t recall the steps.
@ Mr. John Smith - Thanks, got it working as well after Installing Update 3 of VS 2015 and compiling the latest version of MonoRemoteDebugger
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@ Mr. John Smith - [quote]. Now I don’t recall the steps[/quote]
Every project I pick back up!
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