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0 pointshu33y ago0 comments

.NET has AOT now:

> Publishing your app as native AOT produces an app that is self-contained and that has been ahead-of-time (AOT) compiled to native code. Native AOT apps start up very quickly and use less memory. Users of the application can run it on a machine that doesn't have the .NET runtime installed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/nati...

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6 comments · 4 top-level

pyjarrett3y ago· 2 in thread

I've been doing this a lot.

I am doing an experiment of trying out C# as a Python replacement for automation because of (1) the strength of the built-in libraries and (2) not requiring an interpreter. Bundling the C# runtime into application is doable, and the tools are super portable with no changes so far between Windows/Mac/Linux.

However, the smallest I've been able to get the standalone executables with bundled stripped down runtimes is ~9 MiB.

Even with this limitation, I've been super happy with this experiment so far. I'm not sure how committed I am yet to C# over Python, but it's pretty breathtaking what all you get out of the box with .NET

saila3y ago

Coming from a mostly-Python background myself, I'm curious if you've looked into F# for this. It's succinct like Python, gives you type safety, and you can use .NET libraries.

pyjarrett3y ago

I've thought about it, but I spent a lot of time going down the rabbit hole with functional languages with Haskell a few years ago and was just checking out the .NET ecosystem as a whole since I wasn't familiar with C#.

The experiment was "How productive and portable is .NET Core?" knowing that F# is there as a possibility. I dabbled in the tangentially similar OCaml a long time ago, but had wanted to just move fast to answer "Is .NET is a reasonable technical choice for cross-platform tooling I need?" So far it's been a pretty solid "Yes."

Diris3y ago

F# doesn't, though.

https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/issues/13398

banashark3y ago

Are you using .NET AOT?

It's supposedly been possible for quite a while, but every time I talk to someone (granted only a few people who would actually want to use and benefit from it in their software) about it they say "it's missing X" or something of the sort that makes it a total non-starter.

andai3y ago

I read an interesting comment about that yesterday, describing the different options.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34839860

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