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Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#71

Post by thefz »

yrgulation wrote: post #66
thefz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is integrated with lots of other products such as AD, O365... It's far from a "basic chat app". I am sure the app you wrote does not have millions of users daily, either.

"I am sure the app you wrote does not have millions of users daily, either" This argument is weak. Its not like millions of people are crammed within the app all at the same time, while integrated with AD, or other microsoft bloatware. It may impress inexperienced devs, but it's really not much of an architectural challenge. MS could have done a better job. But to satisfy your curiosity, my background is in developin…

AD is bloatware? O365 is?

I think the only inflated thing here is your ego.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#72

Post by lostmsu »

n8cpdx wrote: post #32

Microsoft stopped development (more or less) around May 2020 to focus on MAUI, which was released in November 2020. Actually it wasn’t - MAUI wasn’t released until May 2022, tooling was just released July 2022 for Windows, and VS for Mac with proper support has yet to be released. If you’re used to command line that may not seem like a big deal, but the whole point of the .NET ecosystem is that you have a rich set of…

I continue developing most apps with WPF mostly because they are OS-dependent productivity tools, and target Windows.

For the cross-platform stuff (mostly deep learning demos with UI) I use Avalonia because it supports Linux.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#73

Post by rcarmo »

I had a play with it and Avalonia on Mac, Windows and Linux: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/11/14/1600

However, right now I’m actually writing a simple GUI app in Godot (the game engine), because it is the closest thing to Delphi/Lazarus that I can actually be productive in…

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#74

Post by rcarmo »

robotnikman wrote: post #67
tyleo wrote: post #9

We built Rec Room ( https://recroom.com/ ) using Unity across several platforms: * iOS * Android * PC * PlayStation * Xbox * VR Rec Room is a "game for building games". I'd say Unity has worked pretty well. Given that the product is a game this success with single-lang cross platform may be more common than other industries. Still, though, I'm surprised that there isn't a similar "engine" for non-game cross platform…

Funny enough, I have seen some people use Unity to develop basic cross platform applications rather than games.

I just commented someplace else that I’m using Godot to achieve exactly that. Much smaller and nimbler than Unity, too.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#75

Post by sandreas »

As a C# developer currently trying to improve my skills in UI development this HN thread is enlightening (thank you) but really demoralizing...

I noted down the following technologies to be the next thing to learn / take a look at:

  * MAUI + Blazor Hybrid (no official linux support, which usually is a no go for me)
  * AvaloniaUI (looked very promising, especially the 11 Preview1[1], although not microsoft)
  * Uno Platform (also not bad but not from Microsoft...)
I thought, it would just be a matter of "which one is the best", but it seems that all these did not come to stay or do not have official support from Microsoft (which usually means not getting widely adopted).

An AvaloniaUI example App named Camelot[2] looked good at first, but after testing this on different OSes made me think, that performance wise there is a lot of room for improvement.

So far i have given flutter a wide berth because learning a new language (Dart) AND a new framework did not seem to fit my time capacities, but what I've read here makes me think, that even writing a simple cross platform app it is not worth the effort learning another C# UI technology, because they mostly get abandoned before they really mature.

My personal conclusion: Use Flutter instead! Am I right?

[1]: https://dev.to/avalonia/turning-it-up-to-11-34jn [2]: https://github.com/IngvarX/Camelot

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#76

Post by yrgulation »

thefz wrote: post #71
yrgulation wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am sure the app you wrote does not have millions of users daily, either" This argument is weak. Its not like millions of people are crammed within the app all at the same time, while integrated with AD, or other microsoft bloatware. It may impress inexperienced devs, but it's really not much of an architectural challenge. MS could have done a better job. But to satisfy your curiosity, my background is in developin…

AD is bloatware? O365 is? I think the only inflated thing here is your ego.

I dont think you should be taking this personal. But yes, both are bloatware.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#77

Post by adamdusty »

kolbe wrote: post #48
DonnyV wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't run on Linux. Not sure how they can call it "cross platform" if it doesn't run on Linux. Maybe across Microsoft's platform.

It's for front-end development. There are ~0% use cases for a linux UI outside of development tools and maybe database monitoring tools?

I daily drive Linux and I kind of agree with you. The amount of people I know that use Linux, use non-dev apps on their laptop/desktop, and aren't developers are zero (excluding myself obviously). The actual percentage of non-dev native gui tool users on Linux is probably within the noise of the measurable data.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#78

Post by zigzag312 »

sandreas wrote: post #75

As a C# developer currently trying to improve my skills in UI development this HN thread is enlightening (thank you) but really demoralizing... I noted down the following technologies to be the next thing to learn / take a look at: * MAUI + Blazor Hybrid (no official linux support, which usually is a no go for me) * AvaloniaUI (looked very promising, especially the 11 Preview1[1], although not microsoft) * Uno Platfo…

Dart feels like a lite version of C#, so it shouldn't take you too long to learn.

Performance wise Flutter too has room for improvement. Although, I don't know how Flutter's performance compares to Avalonia.

Flutter, being young framework itself, is probably more mature than Avalonia, Uno or MAUI. Also, Flutter has very good documentation and learning materials and bigger community.

When I'm working with Flutter I do miss more powerful C#, but I for sure don't miss XAML.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#79

Post by thefz »

yrgulation wrote: post #76
thefz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AD is bloatware? O365 is? I think the only inflated thing here is your ego.

I dont think you should be taking this personal. But yes, both are bloatware.

I don't think you should be talking about things you don't know or understand.

Re: Ask HN: Are you using .NET to write cross-platform desktop or mobile apps?

#80

Post by n8cpdx »

brtkdotse wrote: post #50
n8cpdx wrote: post #32

Microsoft stopped development (more or less) around May 2020 to focus on MAUI, which was released in November 2020. Actually it wasn’t - MAUI wasn’t released until May 2022, tooling was just released July 2022 for Windows, and VS for Mac with proper support has yet to be released. If you’re used to command line that may not seem like a big deal, but the whole point of the .NET ecosystem is that you have a rich set of…

What’s your opinion on WinForms? I’ve yet to come across anything that’s better in terms of perf, developer experience and stability.

WinForms is fine but there are issues with support for things like high DPI. Maybe that’s fixed now. I wouldn’t use it except for a very small utility, but nowadays I just use python scripts for small utilities.

Based on the .NET Rocks podcast, it sounds like Blazor is the new WinForms.

Given the situation with Windows, I don’t see it being a great choice for a monoplatform app (unless that app is a game) - chrome books and Mac are getting more popular, and web works everywhere.

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