Open source managed programming languages [closed]

Question

Are there any good, portable, open-source, high-level, statically-typed, imperative, object-oriented, garbage collected, safe languages/runtimes with reasonable performance besides Mono and Java? Mono is nice, but it is a Microsoft technology, and I'm kind of afraid of using it (I'm not sure how rational this fear is). The problem with Java is that it is just too simple (no unsigned data types, no structs, etc.).

Answer 1

Mono isn't a Microsoft technology. .NET is, but Mono isn't - Mono is an open-source implementation of the ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 international standards. Yes, they originated from Microsoft, but Mono itself is not Microsoft technology.

Not that Mono is a language, of course - C# is the language. But then languages aren't really open-source or not - implementations are.

It does sound like you've probably got an irrational fear of C# - and likewise of Java. There are certainly things I'd like to see in Java (and I significantly prefer C#), but it's still perfectly possible to write very significant applications in it.

Answer 2

I'd like to point out Vala, which is a language based on the syntax of C#, but which targets a C compiler (similar to Eiffel) and a lightweight, self-hosted runtime. It lacks garbace collection, though.

Answer 3

Eiffel fulfills all your requirements