What Are the Main Benefits of Using Mono Over Java

What are the main benefits of using Mono over Java?

The answer is pretty obvious: because you want to use .Net on Linux.

This of course begs the question (which I think is really what you're getting at): why would you want to use .Net on Linux (over Java)?

Lots of reasons:

• Common code between your server and, say, a WPF or Winforms app;
• Use of a particular .Net language, like F#;
• Language features that aren't in Java (closures, operator overloading, partial classes, runtime generics, indexers, delegates, LINQ, var types, etc etc etc);
• Your skills or those of your team are already in C#;
• etc.

Is .NET/Mono or Java the better choice for cross-platform development?

Well....Java is actually more portable. Mono isn't implemented everywhere, and it lags behind the Microsoft implementation significantly. The Java SDK seems to stay in better sync across platforms (and it works on more platforms).

I'd also say Java has more tool availability across all those platforms, although there are plenty of tools available for .NET on Windows platforms.

Update for 2014

I still hold this opinion in 2014. However, I'll qualify this by saying I'm just now starting to pay some attention to Mono after a long while of not really caring, so there may be improvements in the Mono runtime (or ecosystem) that I haven't been made aware of. AFAIK, there is still no support for WPF, WCF, WF, of WIF. Mono can run on iOS, but to my knowledge, the Java runtime still runs on far more platforms than Mono. Also, Mono is starting to see some much improved tooling (Xamarin), and Microsoft seems to have a much more cross-platform kind of attitude and willingness to work with partners to make them complimentary, rather than competitive (for example, Mono will be a pretty important part of the upcoming OWIN/Helios ASP.NET landscape). I suspect that in the coming years the differences in portability will lessen rapidly, especially after .NET being open-sourced.

Update for 2018

My view on this is starting to go the other way. I think .NET, broadly, particularly with .NET Core, has started to achieve "portability parity" with Java. There are efforts underway to bring WPF to .NET Core for some platforms, and .NET Core itself runs on a great many platforms now. Mono (owned by Xamarin, which is now owned by Microsoft) is a more mature and polished product than ever, and writing applications that work on multiple platforms is no longer the domain of deep gnosis of .NET hackery, but is a relatively straightforward endeavor. There are, of course, libraries and services and applications that are Windows-only or can only target specific platforms - but the same can be said of Java (broadly).

If I were in the OP's shoes at this point, I can think of no reason inherent in the languages or tech stacks themselves that would prevent me from choosing .NET for any application going forward from this point.

Benefits of having Mono as parameter?

Reactive programming caters for high performance asynchronous data streaming. If you serialize the payload just for logging purposes, you defeat this optimization and risk memory leaks. You can log meta-data though.

If you still need to log request or response bodies, you might consider using a WebFilter, see here for an example: How to log request and response bodies in Spring WebFlux

Difference between a Future and a Mono

The greatest difference is that a Mono<T> can be fully lazy, whereas when you get hold of a Future<T>, the underlying processing has already started.

With a typical cold Mono, nothing happens until you subscribe() to it, which makes it possible to pass the Mono around in the application and enrich it with operators along the way, before even starting the processing.

It is also far easier to keep things asynchronous using a Mono compared to a Future (where the API tends to drive you to call the blocking get()).

Finally, compared to both Future and CompletableFuture, the composition aspect is improved in Mono with the extensive vocabulary of operators it offers.

C# on Linux - Anyone got an opinion based on experience using mono?

I've written a number of C# command-line programs, specifically to run as distributed simulation engines, that were targeted for Ubuntu. They work perfectly there or on Windows.

It's hard to say what the future holds, but C# is a powerful language and I think it's worth learning even just for our personal growth. I despise Windows myself but have been writing C# for a while (for Windows mostly) since it pays the bills.

Novell uses Mono extensively for their Linux applications and I think that their relationship with Microsoft adds some weight to the idea that .NET for Linux will stick around.

Here's a list of some of the companies using Mono.

Mono vs Flux in Reactive Stream

In many cases, you are doing some computation or calling a service and you expect exactly one result (or maybe zero or one result), and not a collection that contains possibly multiple results. In such cases, it's more convenient to have a Mono.

Compare it to "regular" Java: you would not use List as the return type of any method that can return zero or one result. You would use Optional instead, which makes it immediately clear that you do not expect more than one result.

What are the benefits of Java?

I think after 12 years or so, the "write once, run anywhere" mantra is almost true. Writing Java code pretty much isolates you from the platform dependent aspects of the systems on which you deploy it.

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