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Windows & .NET Watch: A touch of Mono

By Larry O'Brien

November 1, 2009 — (Page 1 of 2)
If you track Microsoft technologies, you are probably aware of the Mono Project, an open-source implementation of the .NET development stack that runs on Linux and Mac as well as on Windows. The project is led by Miguel de Icaza and is sponsored by Novell.

Although for years I’ve felt that Linux servers hosting ASP.NET applications via Mono seemed like a sweet combination, many clients have been hesitant, presumably feeling that the possible savings in OS license fees were not worth the risks. Mono seems to have had its greatest successes within the Linux community as an alternative to C/C++. C# is easier to develop in than these compiled languages, and Mono has relatively high performance—probably slower than native code, but likely faster than a dynamic language such as Perl, Python or Ruby.

Some have resisted the Mono project, though, since C# and the CLR, while standardized by ECMA, are driven by Microsoft. For some, the mere proximity to Redmond is enough to stay away. Others have feared subterfuge from Microsoft, and still others have felt that Mono is necessarily “chasing tail-lights” and therefore doomed to be significantly behind in terms of technology.

Fears of sabotage aside, Mono is tailgating aggressively. Currently, one can program in C# 3.0 (including LINQ), VB 8, F#, Java and other JVM-based languages via IKVM, Delphi Prism, and even IronPython and IronRuby. Libraries include ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX, and Windows Forms 2.0. There’s also Moonlight, an open-source implementation of Silverlight. The MonoDevelop IDE, while not ready to go head-to-head with decent commercial IDEs, has code completion, visual project management, and decent code navigation.

In September of 2009, Novell released MonoTouch, a tool chain that supports the iPhone. You may have heard of the iPhone, a device that’s found some measure of success. Apple claims 85,000 apps have been developed for the iPhone, at least several of which are not fart apps. Until MonoTouch, developing for the iPhone essentially meant using Objective C, in large part because the iPhone developer agreement forbids embedding interpreters. But MonoTouch is neither an interpreter nor a JIT compiler: It’s a native code compiler. Runtime support DLLs are copied into the application’s resource bundle so there is no burden on the end user (the size of even a “Hello, World” app is around 7MB).

Related Search Term(s): Apple, Mono, .NET

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Comments

11/01/2009 04:13:28 PM EST

Debuggig will be available to MonoTouch users with out 1.2 release this comic week. Anyone can download the current preview as well that contains the visual debugger; It is pretty much the same debugging experienceybat developers get with visual studio. There is one added bonus: developers can debug over wifi and even distribute apps to beta testers that can be debugged remotely over the Internet

United StatesMiguel de Icaza

11/01/2009 05:17:38 PM EST

"Some have resisted the Mono project, though, since C# and the CLR, while standardized by ECMA, are driven by Microsoft." This statement is rather incorrect. Only a small fraction of C# and CLR is standartized under ECMA. And only 2.6% of all the classes in .NET are standardized under ECMA.

United Stateswashere

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