Question about getting Mono

I keep hearing that Mono will be coming to SL soon. Since I've been out of the programming loop for some time, I had to head over to Wikipedia and read about it. I'm still fuzzy on the concept so I thought I'd ask.

As I understand it, Mono will allow a developer to code in any Mono compatible language using classes defined by Linden Labs. SL will then be able to take that code and interpret it into something that runs using already established in-world functions. Please correct me if I'm wrong, or if I've said this too crudely.

As a half-cocked LSL scripter with barely any real world programming experience (the last two languages I tinkered with were php & perl, and then not much) I'm wondering where this leaves me. I can write enough with LSL to satisfy whatever little projects I have. I had felt like I was becoming more adept with the language. However when Mono gets implemented, and everyone can write in their favorite language, will I be left in the dust? Will the tinkerers like me still be able to write in LSL, or will the in-world language get shelved?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of it, and I'd like to hear some explanations about how this'll work in relation to SL.

right now a switch to mono is behind the scenes only. When you save and you see the script say "compiling" that is the part that will change, which will be done with Mono.

It's important not to confuse everything MONO *can* do with how it will be used by SL.

Right now a few heavy trees of if-then-else can lag you a bit due to how slow LSL can run, but the new mono byte gamertags will be captain of the gravy train. (uhm I mean it will just be faster).

best to listen to a linden and not the 100's of "theories" bound to be posted here.


From Babbage Linden

"Hi Aurael, we have developed a LSL to CIL compiler and it produces code that runs processor intensive algorithms 50-100x faster than the current LSL interpreter. Although we plan to run the existing interpreter and Mono virtual machine side by side initially, the long term goal is to phase out the interpreter and run all scripts on the Mono virtual machine. In addition to the performance increases it would allow us to open some of the .NET framework classes up to LSL as you mentioned as well as allowing other languages that target the CLR like C# and VB to be used to script SL. For more information, keep an eye on my blog http://secondlife.blogs.com/babbage

Cheers,

Babbage."

I read that and laughed. Then I read it three more times until I got it.

So basically when Mono's initially implemented the only difference we'll see is that some of our scripts won't take so long to execute. Then, on some unspecified Linden time line we'll actually see some of the other features like introduction of C# & VB.

Thanks for the link to Babbage's blog, I'm perusing that now.

A question about getting mono?

French kissing someone who has it should do the trick.



P2