Xamarin Brings Mono to IceCream Sandwich

datamation.com

3 points·jstedfast··2 comments

I spent some time evaluating the original beta of the mono tools for Android a year ago. The support and help I got from other developers and from the mono team was fantastic. Lots of enthusiasm and gracious assistance. It was great to be able to apply some .NET classes to an Android app but (always a but?) for my money it was easier and more straightforward to write Java code directly against the Android SDK than it was to write in C# inside Visual Studio.

Don't get me wrong - it worked - I produced my app but the differences between C# and Java are not likely to act as a barrier to even 'died in the wool' C# developers and while Visual Studio runs rings around Eclipse the IDE is good enough.

I think the mono project is fantastic though - I am a fan. I can't for the life of me see why Microsoft do not support the effort financially.

I prefer C# to Java, but compared to $400/yr/developer, I'd just as soon stick with Java.

Granted, $400/year is peanuts for developer tools if you're a large company but for smaller (eg. one man) operations I just don't see it as being worth it, especially as it is an ongoing cost if you want product updates and you really have no guarantee that any specific release of the Android APIs will be well supported in a timely manner (especially if Xamarin goes belly up at some point).

So, yeah... I prefer C# to Java, but Java isn't that bad.

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