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

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81–89 of 89 posts

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

#81

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…

Thanks for the impressions. I think I will try it out :-)

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

#82
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These products have an audience because microsoft speaks management. My advice for them is to git gud and move on.

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

#83
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is also very bloated (or "full featured" depending on how you want to spin it) compared to other chat apps, which does make it special by comparison. Teams is trying very hard to make itself a platform, and it supports telephony in a way that other chat apps don't. I can be reached on my work Teams account via a dedicated phone number, and the account includes a bunch of Viva applications and pretty deep integr…

First indicator that teams is ill designed is feature creep. But i suppose people find some utility in it. Telephony is likely handled by a server and teams is acting as a video / voice client just like any other modern chat app. I dont know about its integration with office and other microsoft bloatware but i do imagine those integrations are poorly designed as well. Microsoft products are well known for taking up m…

I’m not sure I’ve heard the Teams folks explicitly blaming Electron. I run other, more complex MSFT programs (eg Office) on the same computer, and they use a fraction of the memory and CPU that Teams does.

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

#84
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user with a finite amount of memory on my computer, I also regret them choosing Electron.

They should hire better engineers, perhaps those with more experience than just leet code. The apps i built using electron for some clients have none of the issues teams has. I mean come on, teams is a basic chat app, how difficult is it to optimise it?

I know Teams gets a lot of hate on here. Perhaps I am a special exception, but I just don’t see it. Of course I don’t expect much from it, but it’s definitely not the worst chat client I have used. Granted I am using it on MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS, so maybe the hate is not on those platforms.

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

#85
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've deployed an MAUI-app to production. I chose MAUI since the rest of the stack is dotnet and we have ready built SDKs in dotnet to communicate with the backend, so I had a functioning login page up and running in minutes. It was a very frustrating experience in the early days, but as MAUI has matured it's now a pleasure to work with. It is not as feature rich as some other frameworks, but it fulfilled our needs.

Quoted post unavailable.

Your comment doesn’t add to the discussion. On the subject, although I generally agree with you, there is a lot more favorable press/comments for MSFT stuff these days on HN

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

#87

You might want to consider how much Microsoft uses it in their own products before choosing to use it. This article describes the situation pretty well: "not even Microsoft, literally the people who own Xamarin, use it in any of their big products like Teams, Outlook, and the list goes on. Instead, they reach for native development or Electron. So we can just tie a bow in it and have a minute's silence for another en…

So the same story as with MFC.

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

#88
post #57
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are plenty of people who daily drive linux that would disagree with there being "zero use cases"

If you ever are curious about how product managers make their decisions, it's based on more that 'plenty of people'. If you want to be a good engineer, you should also learn the difference between zero and approximately zero, if you want to quote people.

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

#89
You may want to take a look at Nevron Open Vision (https://www.nevron.com/products-open-vision.aspx). This is probably the most advanced desktop cross-platform application development framework around. I work for the company that created it and we have internally compared it to MAUI, Uno, Electron Qt etc. Nevron Open Vision is better in all aspects - it supports more controls, better integration and now also supports Blazor-WebAssembly! MyDraw is one commercial application built with it and tested by thousands of Windows and Mac users.
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