And Mono Is On the Beta Grid

If you missed the official announcement, Mono Beta Launch. Unlike a lot of people, I'm not a big fan of [w:Mono (software)|Mono] - but still, I count the news as good for the now. I'll explain why it is good for the less technical folks out there.

The rumor mill - people who attend the Linden meetings and pass all those unofficial announcements around (that probably get borked somewhere) - has said that scripts should run with a 70x factor increase. In layman's terms, this means scripts in general should be able to execute faster - though I don't expect all scripts to do so because of reliance on timer events or other functions that cause scripts to wait. Still, this performance boost should mean a lot of things running faster. This is one part of getting the grid more usable for people, and in general I consider it good news. I've expressed interest in more concurrent applications on the LSL list, but most people don't really care too much about that... now.

From what made it through the rumor mill filters, it also seems that in the undisclosed date of 'the future' people may be able to code in the C# language. That isn't too bad either.

The comments on the official blog post, as usual, are a little... frustrated. But if Linden Lab can pull off Mono and the new Havok engine, there should be tangible differences on the grid for the average person. And that is coming from someone critical of Linden Lab - not some happy clappy person.

I don't have time to go play on the Beta grid, but I do encourage interested people (especially non-technical folk, I think!) to go check it out, as outlined in the official post. While I am a critic - I do want to see this work, despite my own misgivings at a technical level.