using System; class Hello {

  public static void Main()
  {
     Console.WriteLine( "Hello, World!" );   
  }
}

As an experienced Java developer, learning the syntax and grammar of the C-Sharp language was a pleasant task and took only a few days. There’s a lot of things I like about the language that are definite improvements over the Java 1.4 Language Specification: delegates and events as a modern-day interface callback mechanism, properties as a shorthand for accessors and modifiers, boxing and unboxing, and my favorite, the return of enumerations and declarative, iterative constructs.

The bad news is that C-Sharp has also brought back many of the annoyances of the C++ language. These include operator overloading, the infamous goto, structures, and non-automatic dynamic binding. I’ll just pretend that these features don’t exist. And for the most part, you aren’t required to use any of these language constructs in your code anyway.

The best part, of course, is the open source Mono .NET Compiler for Linux. Sponsored by Novell, Mono includes both developer tools and the infrastructure needed to run .NET client and server applications. Even Windows Forms support is currently in the works. This technology has a lot of potential, but I’m still, understandably, just a little bit skeptical of Microsoft.