Indie-Resource.com

Have you guys ever heard of Xamarin? It's an IDE that allows you to write apps in C# and then export them to any App Store. There is a free version, as well as 3 other tiered paid versions.

HTTPS://Xamarin.com
https://store.xamarin.com

Yes I saw it. Even if I love (truly love) C# and .NET, I'm far from convinced by this project. Maybe because it's based on the Mono project which in my opinion is useless, or maybe because I don't trust those pseudo solutions. Remains the fact I would not trust it till I really test it

a_bertrand wrote:Yes I saw it. Even if I love (truly love) C# and .NET, I'm far from convinced by this project. Maybe because it's based on the Mono project which in my opinion is useless, or maybe because I don't trust those pseudo solutions. Remains the fact I would not trust it till I really test it

This summer my job will be improving my fish harvesting game and turning it into a full game, published on the web and on the major mobile platforms. I'm considering getting the free version and learning some C# to try it out.

Btw, on the site, it gives a side-by-side comparison of C# and Objective-C. C# is similar to Java (I know why) and Objective-C is similar to what comes from a bull's posterior.

Objective C is indeed ugly... And by far not that evolved. The only positive aspect I see is the garbage collection (if I understood right and is there).

C# is indeed similar to Java, and nobody ever presented it differently. It's like a Java 2.0 where the base syntax is similar, everything (and really everything) is derived from Object, where you can create your own base types like Int, define your operator overload (yes it is useful, and needed) and much more. But C# is specially good due to the huge .NET library under and Visual Studio. Not having visual studio basically drops the quality of C# by at least 50%.

a_bertrand wrote:Yes I saw it. Even if I love (truly love) C# and .NET, I'm far from convinced by this project. Maybe because it's based on the Mono project which in my opinion is useless, or maybe because I don't trust those pseudo solutions. Remains the fact I would not trust it till I really test it

I think we have had this conversation in another thread, but even if the name and some of the devs are shared between the main Mono project, this is obviously a different runtime (ARM vs. x86), so it may be worth a look. Plus, they make no promises of running CLR apps as-is on their runtime, which is really where Mono begins to fall short. If you are writing software for Xamarin, you are building it specifically to target Xamarin. You aren't writing it for and testing it on the CLR, and then hoping it works on Linux.

I might be tempted to give Xamarin a try.

It is a commercial product, but if it really does everything is claims it does, it is likely worth it. And they are one of the hottest things in mobile development today, so I can only assume it does.

If you are interested in game development with Xamarin, check out their game-focused project, MonoGame. They split the projects in kind of a confusing way. MonoGame is an open-source project that brings XNA to non-Windows platforms, but to target Android and iOS you need a Xamarin license for those platforms (they target the Xamarin runtime). But there are other platforms that don't require a Xamarin license, and thus can be used for free.

$1k for VS support?

hallsofvallhalla wrote:$1k for VS support?

I didn't see that. I thought you just paid for a license for each export platform target. Do you have a link to it being $1k for VS support?

999$ PER Platform, PER Developer / Year.. Whoa!