

Ask HN: How did C# become one of the most cross platform languages of all time? - dham

This always intrigued me.  I&#x27;d like to know the history of this.  Seems unlikely that a language from Microsoft would be great at building Mac&#x2F;iOS apps, games(Unity), and Android.  Is this just due to the work from the Mono team?  I think C# is pretty cool but would have been great to see Ruby or Python get the same love.
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runjake
C# was an open standard from the start. And it was well-designed.

And yes, a big reason for C#'s cross-platformness is the work of De Icaza and
the Mono technology.

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loumf
I think this is true (from memory)

Unity was already C# before phones and paid Mono to port it to the iPhone.
That kicked off Mono realizing that these new platforms could be a source of
revenue, and charged for support. Their approach has been: Mono is free for
free OS's and for pay for proprietary ones.

Another driving force is that C#/VB.NET is very popular in the enterprise for
Desktop apps. This pool of developers need something for phones/tablets and
there's Mono just ready for them.

Ruby/Python are not as good for desktop apps (more on servers) and phones,
Macs, and tablets are not likely servers.

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theforgottenone
It is also a very well thought out language, that took from Java's history
many of the mistakes it made, learned from them, and avoided them.

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gjvc
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure)

