Is that really a "quirk" of specifically Go? I am pretty sure Java--the implementation of which defined a lot of how numerous languages handle this kind of thing--has the same behavior: you can cast String[] to Object, but not Object[].
Note that array covariance is largely considered a design mistake and if .NET was to be redone it wouldn't have one (and a bunch of smaller things that are an artifact of generics getting introduced in C# 2.0 and not 1.0, well, the problem is much worse in Go heh).
Other data structures like List<T>, Span<T>, etc. do away with covariance. There's an upcast for ReadOnlySpan<T> but only because it's zero-cost and does not introduce the issues stemming from covariance.
Luckily, you almost never see someone use array covariance beyond occasional object[] upcasts (and the compiler is also good at reasoning whether to insert covariance checks or not).
.NET is still called COM+ in .NET's source code, they initially envisioned .NET as a successor to COM. They wrote about COM+ in 1997 in an issue of Microsoft Systems Journal (they talked about GC, runtime type info, etc.) It makes me believe the idea for .NET (COM+) existed before the lawsuit. It's possible that after the lawsuit, the COM+ and J++ teams were merged to reposition it as mainly a Java alternative.
That was the Ext-VOS project, that I made a reference to.
WinRT was supposed to replace .NET by the original goals, after the Sinofsky and his followers took over Windows development after Vista, it has been COM as the main API.
"Turning to the past to power Windows’ future: An in-depth look at WinRT"
I never heard about "Ext-VOS". Tried googling it, and all mentions of it are from you ("pjmlp"), on Reddit, Github, etc. :) Where can I read more about it?
OK, so from what I've read, "VOS" was the older name for CTS (Common Type System), not the name of the whole project. The project was named COM+, COM Object Runtime, and Project Lightning at different times. "Ext-VOS" ("extensions to VOS") is a document that primarily proposes generics, which were only added in C# 2.0.
There was mostly no reason to cause unnecessary code churn to rename pre-existing code with complus-named variables inside dotnet/runtime. External-facing features and documentation never reference it. For compatibility reasons it still recognizes env. variables prefixed with COMPlus_ alongside DOTNET_ though.
Yes, and 25 years later Java is still relevant enough that Microsoft has become yet again a Java vendor, with their own distribution, made the key contribution for Windows ARM support, VSCode Java experience is still ahead of C# DevKit thanks collaboration with Red-Hat, and doesn't require an additional licence.
At the same time, JVM has embraced the polyglot ecosystem CLR was supposed to be, while C# seems to have sucked the life of all those language implementations demoed at the launch back in 2001, and .NET SDK being offered on computer magazine CDs.
Which is kind of interesting, how things have changed 25 years later.
At least we finally have cross platform support (ignoring Mono and DotGNU efforts), and good AOT instead of NGEN, which should have been there on .NET 1.0.
If you have to reach for popularity as an argument in favour of technology X or platform Y, perhaps it's not a technical point you want to make?
> VSCode Java experience is still ahead of C# DevKit thanks collaboration with Red-Hat, and doesn't require an additional licence.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally attempting to make inflammatory replies or something in what I said rubbed you the wrong way.
(for other readers - this marks me posting for 20th time here that DevKit is an optional product and thousands of developers are happily coding in C# in VS Code and VSCodium, Neovim and Emacs without ever running into it)
Unfortunately not always the best technology wins out, and the turns that go around them are nonetheless quite interesting.
I am stating facts, do you want links to .NET team interviews where they assert it is a business decision VSCode is never going to achieve feature parity with VS for .NET?
VSCode for Java doesn't have such artificial constraint, hence the better tooling, mainly implemented by Red-Hat.
C# DevKit being optional doesn't change the fact specific features are only available when users opt into using it, with a corrrespondig Visual Studio license.
And yes, this irritates me, because I feel it is a disservice to .NET community how Linux and macOS developers are kind of 2nd class, not by .NET team themselves, but higher up Microsoft management.
No, I don't. Developer tooling teams which ship Visual Studio and DevKit are almost completely separate from the teams overseeing the development of .NET itself (including the team responsible for the SDK). And, honestly, I could not care less because it does not affect me or my colleagues in any material way, nor it affects the actual Linux or macOS users.
And also, have you tried writing Java in VS Code? I have and it is overall worse (read: less stable) than just using IntelliJ Idea in a way that isn't an issue when doing so in C#/Go/Rust/TS.
Ah doesn't affect you that graphical profiling tools are only available on VS, that management thought for a brief second to make hot reload VS only (saved by .NET community uproar and folks like Hanselman jumping onto discussion?), or that MAUI designer was thrown into the garbage can, and what is now available is pretty much WIP?
Lucky one I guess.
I have used it, its stability issue is orthogonal to feature parity, being whole Eclipse running headless, which is the point, features.
C# inherited this from Java, which added it because it was designed without generics and therefore decided that the additional expressiveness provided by enforced array covariance was worth the tradeoff of having an unsound type system.
Huh, fair enough!! What's then funny in the context of this thread is that, while I am sure I knew that 20-25 years ago, it feels so wrong that it would support that -- and more like a "quirk" that it ever would -- that it surprises me (though it certainly doesn't shock me: most things have many quirks).
