Today Joseph mentioned to me that some of our users got the impression from my previous post on WinRT that we would be implementing WinRT for Linux. We are not working on a WinRT UI stack for Linux, and do not have plans to.

WinRT is a fabulous opportunity for Mono, because Microsoft is sending a strong message: if you want your code to run in multiple scenarios (server, desktops, sandboxed environments), you want to split your UI code from your backend code.

This is great because it encourages developers to think in terms of having multiple facades for the same code base and the direction that we have been taking Mono on in the last few years.

Use the native toolkit on each platform to produce an immersive user experience, and one that leverages the native platform in the best possible way.

These are the APIs that we envision .NET developers using on each platform:

• Windows: WinRT, Winforms, WPF (fallbacks: Gtk#, Silverlight)
• MacOS: MonoMac (fallback: Gtk#, Silverlight)
• Linux: Gtk#
• Android: MonoDroid APIs
• iOS: MonoTouch
• Windows Phone 7: Silverlight
• XBox360: XNA-based UI

Even if a lot of code could be reused from Moonlight, WinRT is a moving target. It is not clear that the Linux desktop, as we know it today, is keeping up with the growth of other consumer environments. I talked to Tim about this at Build.

Head-less WinRT

There are some GUI-less components of WinRT that *do* make sense to bring to Mono platforms. There is already an implementation of some bits of the headless WinRT components being done by Eric.

The above effort will enable more code sharing to take place between regular .NET 4 apps, WP7 apps, Mono apps and WinRT apps.

Windows 8 as introduced at Build is an exciting release as it has important updates to how Microsoft envisions users will interact with their computers, to a fresh new user interface to a new programming model and a lot more.

If you build software for end-users, you should watch Jensen Harris discuss the Metro principles in Windows 8. I find myself wanting to spend time using Windows 8.

But the purpose of this post is to share what I learned at the conference specifically about WinRT and .NET.

The Basics

Microsoft is using the launch of Windows 8 as an opportunity to fix long-standing problems with Windows, bring a new user interface, and enable a safe AppStore model for Windows.

To do this, they have created a third implementation of the XAML-based UI system. Unlike WPF which was exposed only to the .NET world and Silverlight which was only exposed to the browser, this new implementation is available to C++ developers, HTML/Javascript developers and also .NET developers.

.NET developers are very familiar with P/Invoke and COM Interop. Those are two technologies that allow a .NET developer to consume an external component, for example, this is how you would use the libc "system (const char *)" API from C#:

	[DllImport ("libc")]
	void system (string command);
	[...]

	system ("ls -l /");
	

We have used P/Invoke extensively in the Mono world to create bindings to native libraries. Gtk# binds the Gtk+ API, MonoMac binds the Cocoa API, Qyoto binds the Qt API and hundred other bindings wrap other libraries that are exposed to C# as object-oriented libraries.

COM Interop allows using C or C++ APIs directly from C# by importing the COM type libraries and having the runtime provide the necessary glue. This is how Mono talked with OpenOffice (which is based on COM), or how Mono talks to VirtualBox (which has an XPCOM based API).

There are many ways of creating bindings for a native library, but doing it by hand is bound to be both tedious and error prone. So everyone has adopted some form of "contract" that states what the API is, and the binding author uses this contract to create their language binding.

WinRT

WinRT is a new set of APIs that have the following properties:

• It implements the new Metro look.
• Has a simple UI programming model for Windows developers (You do not need to learn Win32, what an HDC, WndProc or LPARAM is).
• It exposes the WPF/Silverlight XAML UI model to developers.
• The APIs are all designed to be asynchronous.
• It is a sandboxed API, designed for creating self-contained, AppStore-ready applications. You wont get everything you want to create for example Backup Software or Hard Disk Partitioning software.
• The API definitions is exposed in the ECMA 335 metadata format (the same one that .NET uses, you can find those as ".winmd" files).

WinRT wraps both the new UI system as well as old Win32 APIs and it happens that this implementation is based on top of COM.

WinRT Projections

What we call "bindings" Microsoft now calls "projections". Projections are the process of exposing APIs to three environments: Native (C and C++), HTML/Javascript and .NET.

	public sealed class AddTwo {
		public int Add (int a, int b)
		{
			return a + b;
		}

		public async IAsyncOperation SubAsync (int a, int b)
		{
			return a - await (CountEveryBitByHand (b));
		}
	}
	

Continuing our tradition of getting together with Mono users at Microsoft conferences, we are going to be hosting an event at the Sheraton Hotel next to the conference on Thursday at 6:30pm (just after Ask the Experts).

Come join us with your iOS, Android, Mac and Linux questions.

Lluis just released the final version of MonoDevelop 2.6.

This release packs a lot of new features, some of my favorite features in this release are:

• Git support.
  • It not only provides the regular source code control commands, it adds full support for the various Git idioms not available in our Subversion addin.
  • Based on Java's JGit engine
  • Ported to C# using db4Object's sharpen tool. Which Lluis updated significantly
  • Logging and Blaming are built into the editor.
• Mac support:
  • Our fancy MonoMac support lets you build native Cocoa applications. If you have not jumped into this Steve Jobs Love Fest, you can get started with our built-in templates and our online API documentation.
  • Native File Dialogs! We now use the operating system file dialogs, and we even used our own MonoMac bindings to get this done.
  • You can also check my Mac/iOS-specific blog for more details.
• Unified editor for Gtk#, ASP.NET, MonoTouch and MonoDroid: we no longer have to track various forks of MonoDevelop, they have all converged into one tree.

The above is just a taste of the new features in MonoDevelop 2.6. There are many more nominate your own!

Congratulations to the MonoDevelop team on the great job they did!

And I want to thank everyone that contributed code to MonoDevelop, directly or indirectly to make this happen.

As I meet new Unix hackers using Linux or Mac, sometimes I am surprised at how few Unix tricks they know. It is sometimes painful to watch developers perform manual tasks on the shell.

What follows are my recommendations on how to improve your Unix skills, with a little introduction as to why you should get each book. I have linked to each one of those books with my Amazon afiliates link, so feel free to click on those links liberally.

Here is the list of books that programmers using Unix should read. It will only take you a couple of days to read them, but you will easily increase your productivity by a whole order of magnitude.

The Basics

The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike is a must-read. Although this is a very old book and it does not cover the fancy new features in modern versions of Unix, no other book covers in such beauty the explanation of the shell quoting rules, expansion rules, shell functions and the redirection rules.

Every single thing you do in Unix will use the above in some form or shape, and until you commit those to memory you will be a tourist, and not a resident.

Then you will learn sed and basic awk, both tools that you will use on a daily basis once you become proficient. You do not have to ever be scared of sed or regular expressions anymore.

Save yourself the embarrassment, and avoid posting on the comments section jwz's quote on regular expressions. You are not jwz.

It will take you about a week of commuting by bus to read it. You do not have to finish the book, you can skip over the second part.

Unix Boot Camp

While Kernighan's book is basic literacy, you need to develop your muscles and you need to do this fast and not buy a book so thick and so packed with ridiculous screenshots that you will never get past page 20.

Get UNIX for the Impatient. This book is fun, compact and is packed with goodies that will make you enjoy every minute in Unix.

Learn Emacs

Emacs has had a strong influence in Unix over the years. If you learn to use Emacs, you will automatically learn the hotkeys and keybindings in hundreds of applications in Unix.

The best place to learn Emacs is to launch Emacs and then press Control-h and then t. This is the online tutorial and it will take you about two hours to complete.

The knowledge that you will gain from Emacs will be useful for years to come. You will thank me. And you will offer to buy me a beer, which I will refuse because I rather have you buy me a freshly squeezed orange juice.

Tooting my own horn

Learn to use the Midnight Commander.

The Midnight Commander blends the best of both worlds: GUI-esque file management with full access to the Unix console.

The Midnight Commander is a console application that shows 2 panels listing two different directories side-by-side and provides a command line that is fed directly to the Unix shell.

The basics are simple: use the arrow keys to move around, Control-S to do incremental searches over filenames, Control-t to tag or untag files and the F keys to perform copy, move or delete operations. Copy and Move default to copy to the other panel (which you can conveniently switch to by pressing the tab key).

There is no better way of keeping your file system organized than using my file manager.

Becoming a Power User

If you can not quench your thirst for knowledge there is one last book that I will recommend. This is the atomic bomb of Unix knowledge.

Unix Power Tools is a compilation of tricks by some of the best Unix users that got compiled into a huge volume. This is a book of individual tricks, each about a page long, ideal to keep either on your bedside or in the restoom to pick a new trick every day.

Mavis Beacon

At this point you might be thinking "I am awesome", "the world is my oyster" and "Avatar 3D was not such a bad movie".

But unless you touch-type, you are neither awesome, nor you are in a position to judge the qualities of the world as an oyster or any James Cameron movies.

You have to face the fact that not only you are a slow typist, you do look a little bit ridiculous. You are typing with two maybe three fingers on each hand and you move your head like a chicken as you alternate looking at your keyboard and looking at your screen.

Do humanity a favor and learn to touch type.

You can learn to touch type in about three weeks if you spend some two to three hours per day using Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.

Mavis Beacon costs seventeen dollars ($17). Those seventeen dollars and the sixty three hours you will spend using it will do more to advance your carreer than the same sixty three hours spend reading editorials on Hacker News.

Classics

All of the books I list here have stood the test of time. They were written at a time when books were designed to last a lifetime.

Unlike most modern computer books, all of these were a pleasure to read.