Sean Corfield on Mono
Sean has some notes on this post about Microsoft, developments tools and developers keeping up. In addition he makes some notes on Mono. Starting with the Microsoft tools.
The learning curve between one tool and the next for developers can be something that gets in the way, not all development houses can buy in the tools so they stick with what they have got and make the migration when they can. Those that can afford it want to take advantage of what Microsoft are doing, how they are forever pushing the edges of what they doing, how they are listening to developers and crafting the tools that developers want. Thats not a bad thing, in our industry sitting still is rather a bad thing.
Mono, its too early to say what will happen with Mono. Plans for running windows form apps and such forth are afoot but again its too early in the day. Let me say this, its an opensource project lead by a very smart bunch of people. What ever they decide for Mono it will be what folks want for the project. I don't see Longhorn effecting Mono, .NET 2.0, the CLR and C# specs are not one and the same. Longhorn failing would not effect a system thats running on other platforms, other windows and hosted Mono platforms alike. Anything wrong with Java, no nothing, but finding risk in Mono is like finding risk in Java.