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Why C# is the best language for mobile development

blog.xamarin.com

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

#91

Post by corresation »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #90
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.

> I find LINQ to have been a horrendous misstep ... grows it becomes a terrible cancer -- everything becomes an amorphous blob of stuff, unintuitive, performance-disaster LINQ filters I couldn't agree less. Any language construct can be abused, but LINQ is not particularly susceptible to abuse, unless you try very hard.

LINQ is from the outset designed for abuse, and you don't have to try hard whatsoever.

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

#92

Post by jordan0day »

MichaelGG wrote: post #67
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…

Then why use C# over F#? F# has a more flexible dynamic system (provide your own implementation), better type inference, and even more unsafe access. So you lose nothing but goto and a bit of loop flexibility. In theory, a better JIT could provide as-good-as-C output, but in practice you end up screwing around and ending up with less-than-optimal machine code. But F# actually provides an advantage here: inlining. The…

I guess one thing I left out in my post that I should have added was: it's easy for people to learn.

I bet just about anyone with much programming experience can spend 5 minutes looking at C# and understand most of the language. It's familiar enough for anyone from a C/C++/Java/JavaScript/PHP background that it's not intimidating, even at first blush. I bet C# is more comfy for a lot of Ruby and Python folks, too.

I really, really, really like F#. The main problem with F# isn't a language or syntax problem (in fact, it's not a problem at all). F# (or other functional-first languages) isn't just different syntax-wise, it's different thinking-wise. A "good" F# program is generally written in a fundamentally different way than a "good" C# program. This is the declarative vs. imperative split. Sometimes it's really hard to convince people to change the way they think about how to go about solving a problem.

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

#93

Post by jordan0day »

oddthink wrote: post #82
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…

Just an aside: I don't think you can really say "dynamic programming enthusiast" to mean "dynamically-typed language enthusiast", since "dynamic programming" already means something quite different. It threw me a bit, at least.

Nice catch, I probably should have said "dynamic programming language enthusiast".

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

#94

Post by NateDad »

corresation wrote: post #46
abolibibelot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Are you saying that map, filter, reduce and al. on lazy sequences in functional languages are inferior to loops, or that Python list comprehensions and generators are inferior to loops? That's basically LINQ to objects. Maybe you're refering to LINQ-to-whatever (LINQ to SQL, etc.), a LINQ generalization where you can quote your expressions, rewrite the AST and emit something else (a very constrain…

In the vast majority of cases it is nothing more than syntactical sugar around loops. And no, I'm not saying that loops are superior, but rather I'm saying that loops are usually a terrible solution, but LINQ has a way of essentially hiding those egregious violators. Take a block of code with LINQ in it and rewrite it minus LINQ but logically performing the same operations that the sugar is resolving to. To most deve…

95% of the time, what looks like a failed "loops 101" test actually doesn't matter at all. Maybe your list comparison function takes O(n^2) time... if your list never gets above 10-20 objects, who cares? Yes, if you're running LINQ over a list of 1,000,000 items, then you'll want to be careful what you're calling. But how often does that really happen in mobile apps?

What LINQ does is make your code more concise and readable. It makes it easier to find bugs and easier to understand by someone else (even if someone else is you, 6 months down the road).

It also just takes a lot less time to write.

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

#95

Post by bigdubs »

amirrajan wrote: post #85
bigdubs wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, yes this leveraging of dynamic metadata provider technically satisfies the requirements for a mixin, but you're still not applying this mixin to a poco, therefore i don't think it's fair to say the language/spec supports it natively. this is another example of adding mixins to .net code via 3rd party library: http://remix.codeplex.com/

"but you're still not applying this mixin to a poco" Clarify?

POCO = Plain Old (CLR) Object

The distinction I'm drawing here is what is meant by 'natively supports' and 'supported via a 3rd party library'

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

#96

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

corresation wrote: post #91
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find LINQ to have been a horrendous misstep ... grows it becomes a terrible cancer -- everything becomes an amorphous blob of stuff, unintuitive, performance-disaster LINQ filters I couldn't agree less. Any language construct can be abused, but LINQ is not particularly susceptible to abuse, unless you try very hard.

LINQ is from the outset designed for abuse, and you don't have to try hard whatsoever.

That hasn't been my experience, I'm glad to say. And given the amount of c# code I've worked on already, it's unlikely to ever be.

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

#97

Post by meaty »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #88
meaty wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes until we get to: List , string>>>

If you're doing that it's crap code; you should have defined a few named object types. Maybe your "Dictionary " is e.g. actually a "PropertyMap". this is not a problem in the c# language. See also: "primitive obsession" http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrimitiveObsession http://sourcemaking.com/refactoring/primitive-obsession

Not at all - you just missed a few facts that need considering. Lets rip it to bits some more:

It's in system.windows.forms isn't it? Don't really want that dependency and associated resolution being dragged in to a web app otherwise the compiler has to load the entire assembly's metadata.

Also, it requires full trust.

Oh and finally it isn't serializable.

Which is why we end up with SerializableDictionary which is even longer and is an adaptor for Dictionary which implements serialization.

That's why it all sucks.

And I haven't even included ConcurrentDictionary thread safety yet.

The whole thing is a fucking mess.

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

#98

Post by benzor »

jordan0day wrote: post #87
benzor wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you're really attacking a straw man here. Neither C# itself nor the OP's article sell C# as being a prime language for functional, dynamic, or systems programming. Rather, it has inherited some convenient little bits of each paradigm to make the language that much nicer to write. For example, don't want to redeclare that "List >" you're copying over because it has a scope of 2 lines? Just dynamically type…

Whoa, I'm not attacking anything . I like C# a lot, but I think I'm realistic about it -- it's nobody's perfect language, except in the case of "what's a widely-adopted, multi-paradigm language that I can do typical OO stuff in, but also all that cool dynamic and FP stuff they talk about on hackernews all the time? Also, my coworkers need to be able to understand it?" That's why at the end of my reply I say I think i…

Right, sorry about that, I interpreted your post as being more snarky than it actually was in retrospect. I just love how quickly I get work done with C#, so apologies for getting defensive :)

As for the var feature, you're absolutely right that I'm confusing two things there, because as another commenter pointed out, I use it mainly as a "save myself typing when it doesn't matter" feature.

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

#99

Post by benzor »

frio wrote: post #76
benzor wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you're really attacking a straw man here. Neither C# itself nor the OP's article sell C# as being a prime language for functional, dynamic, or systems programming. Rather, it has inherited some convenient little bits of each paradigm to make the language that much nicer to write. For example, don't want to redeclare that "List >" you're copying over because it has a scope of 2 lines? Just dynamically type…

He's not attacking anything; the two of you are in (violent) agreement :). He's saying that C# provides all those little bits its "inherited", so it's an acceptably-good language for pretty much anyone, no matter your background.

Yeah, as I replied above, I'm a fan and I got overly defensive, so apologies again :)

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

#100

Post by redstripe »

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…

3. So you like ARC? Do you prefer it over endless retain/release calls?

a. because it reduces the chances of memory leaks in your code? Because in this case you negate your "every programmer worth his salt" point in #5 which we've all seen thousands of times when people explain why c++ is really the best language to be writing all software.

b. because it greatly reduces the repeated boilerplate code? Which is pretty much how I define objective c in a single word: tedium. It's been a few years but all I remember from my brief foray is comparing every tutorial to how much shorter everything would be if it were written in another language. Pretty much any language other than c++ not just c#.

If you think ARC is a great step forward then maybe you are honest enough to admit that objective c could make several giant other leaps and it might even end up looking a lot more like c#.

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