Why C# is the best language for mobile development • Hacker News Board

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#21

Post by meaty » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

joelangeway wrote: post #11

corresation wrote: post #2

While a bit of an aside, personally I find LINQ to have been a horrendous misstep in the evolution of the language. While the argument that it makes code more concise and easy to maintain holds in the small, once a project grows it becomes a terrible cancer -- everything becomes an amorphous blob of stuff, unintuitive, performance-disaster LINQ filters applied everywhere to bend it into shape.

This is a fundamental place where the worlds of C# and Java differ. Where the Java world would say, "developers might misuse this, better not have it in the language," the C# world says, "developers could really use this, better put it in the language."

And if you've worked on a large project with a lot of cats to herd for both platforms, you will appreciate java very quickly.

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#22

Post by natfriedman » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:29 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #7

Please don't actually do this - or if you do this, use the C# code only for the backend, and write the UI code natively for each platform. Nothing is worse than a 'not quire right' 'seems almost the same but isnt' UI.

You have misunderstood. iOS and Android apps built using C# have access to 100% of the native API of the underlying platform. So all of the UI is fully native. Take a look at our API documentation on iOS, for example:

http://iosapi.xamarin.com/?link=root%3a%2fMonoTouch-lib

You can see thousands of iOS APIs bound, including all of UIKit: http://iosapi.xamarin.com/?link=N%3aMonoTouch.UIKit

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#23

Post by danabramov » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:29 PM UTC

gte910h wrote: post #10

The vast majority of the code in most apps is not core code, it's display code. That's STILL entirely device specific. I think the C# advocates oversell how much it is reusable If you STARTED with a great pile of C# code, say, running on the desktop or server, then wanted to port that to an iOS device, then you have a point. One big problem with non-native code is that example code is almost always written in native…

>One big problem with non-native code is that example code is almost always written in native code, and can be hard/impossible to get new features working once you try to translate across the language barrier

I have not found this to be true for ObjC -> C# translation. In fact, it's the opposite: translating code is pretty straightforward, and CoreAnimation calls are no exception.

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#24

Post by ConstantineXVI » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:31 PM UTC

gte910h wrote: post #10

The vast majority of the code in most apps is not core code, it's display code. That's STILL entirely device specific. I think the C# advocates oversell how much it is reusable If you STARTED with a great pile of C# code, say, running on the desktop or server, then wanted to port that to an iOS device, then you have a point. One big problem with non-native code is that example code is almost always written in native…

Xamarin's examples for MonoDroid are (IMHO) pretty solid, to the point where I'll go to them first instead of the Android docs (even though I'm writing Java[0]).

It's true you have to re-write the UI code on every platform, but it's still the same language on all platforms, so less of a barrier vs. a total ground-up rewrite. Frankly, I see that as a plus, else you end up with badly cloned iOS-like UIs everywhere.

[0] Should note that I'd happily be using MonoDroid if I had a say in the matter.

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#25

Post by gjulianm » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:32 PM UTC

taumeson wrote: post #14

gjulianm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give an example of that? Personally, I like LINQ a lot. I don't use it very much in my code (and usually it's for things like light filter or ordering), but it has these little things that save a lot of time.

Be careful what you ask for -- you have to admit that it is possible to create some horrendous "code" with Linq. Also I have a hunch that OP is thinking of L2S or Linq2Entities or somesuch.

Well, horrendous code can be created with anything: LINQ, C#, Objective-C... But yes, such easy-to-use tools like LINQ are easily overused and you end up with real monstrous code.

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#26

Post by king_magic » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:33 PM UTC

Sigh. Okay, let's play this game.

1. "Cutting edge", first thing listed is asynchronous programming. Okay, don't get me wrong, I like C#, I like the Task Parallel Library, but Grand Central Dispatch in OS X/iOS is beautifully simple and incredibly powerful. It does everything I need it to do.

2. "Powerful features" - OOP. Really? And Java/Objective-C don't support OOP/encapsulation? You can't do dependency injection in Java/Objective-C? lol.

3. "Advanced runtime" - garbage collection. I'd rather use ARC in Objective-C instead of depending on a garbage collector.

4. "Reliability" – type safety. Really? And Java/Objective-C aren't type safe? I seriously doubt that anyone considers Java or Objective-C to not be reliable languages when it comes to type safety. This is almost laughable, IMO.

5. "Easy to adopt" - easy to learn. Ok, I'll give you this one over Objective-C. But frankly, I expect a good programmer worth his salt to be able to learn another platform, and I don't consider iOS or Android to be conceptually more difficult than Windows.

6. "Fast execution. C# on iOS is powered by the LLVM optimizing compiler." Uh, I think I'd rather use Objective-C compiled with LLVM. And the bit about "performance of a low-level language"? I don't consider Objective-C to be a "low-level language".

7. "Native access" - sweet, I can use some fragile interface that breaks when Apple decides to deprecate half of their stuff. Can't wait! I love waiting for libraries to catch up.

8. "Portability" - this is a decent point, but let's be realistic - we're talking "minimally portable" here. Write-once run-anywhere is a pipe dream, IMO (at least at this point). There are always platform-specific considerations that need to be taken, and they are not always compatible with other platforms. But even still, this point should have been the main focus of the article. Points 1-7 are minor compared to this.

This just doesn't feel like a serious discussion of C#'s potential for mobile development.

Edit: just for the record, I'm not necessarily trying to refute all or some of the OP's points. I think the original article was poorly written, and the case for C# was poorly made. Hence my "let's play this game" comment.

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#27

Post by Nitramp » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:34 PM UTC

What is he comparing to? Arguments #2-#5 & #7 seem to apply to Java as well, and #6 just quotes an extremely lopsided benchmark exploiting one specific feature of their C# implementation. Most of the arguments would apply to Objective C too, I presume (though I haven't really used that outside of toying around).

I'd personally expect we'll see a lot more JS for mobile apps: a terrible language compared to C#, but a very well understood UI layer (HTML).

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#28

Post by nnq » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:37 PM UTC

jordan0day wrote: post #20

As languages go, C# may be the ultimate "middle ground" because it really excels and providing a middling implementation of [your-favorite-language-feature]. That is, if you're a functional programming enthusiast, you can do a lot of functional programming in C#. Sure, it's often more painful than haskell or lisp or F#, but it's workable. If you're a dynamic programming enthusiast, C# has a perfectly workable (but ul…

Why is C#'s OOP disappointing to Smalltalk guys?

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#29

Post by king_magic » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:39 PM UTC

natfriedman wrote: post #18

gte910h wrote: post #10

The vast majority of the code in most apps is not core code, it's display code. That's STILL entirely device specific. I think the C# advocates oversell how much it is reusable If you STARTED with a great pile of C# code, say, running on the desktop or server, then wanted to port that to an iOS device, then you have a point. One big problem with non-native code is that example code is almost always written in native…

That's actually not what we see with our customers and their apps. Here is a real-world example of code sharing percentages for an iOS, Android, and Mac app written in C#: http://lipsky.me/blog/2012/9/11/touchdraw-code-reuse-updated And here is another one across iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows, also in C#: http://praeclarum.org/post/31799384896/icircuit-code-reuse-t... Both of these apps are using 100% _native widget…

Not all code is created equal. That 30% that needs to be rewritten for each device could be difficult to tune for each platform. Personally, I'd like to see some more information on what exactly was reused.

Re: Why C# is the best language for mobile development

#30

Post by CodeCube » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 7:40 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #26

Sigh . Okay, let's play this game. 1. "Cutting edge", first thing listed is asynchronous programming. Okay, don't get me wrong, I like C#, I like the Task Parallel Library, but Grand Central Dispatch in OS X/iOS is beautifully simple and incredibly powerful. It does everything I need it to do. 2. "Powerful features" - OOP. Really? And Java/Objective-C don't support OOP/encapsulation? You can't do dependency injection…

for #1, there's a bit more to asynchronous programming in C# these days than the TPL. Take a look at the new async/await keywords in C# 5. Lets you write asynchronous code without having to deal with callbacks.