[gum_ina_package]

Interesting to see all the recent activity on HN about cross platform development. Seems like, as far as native code solutions go, C#/.NET is our best bet. As a C# junkie I'm excited about this, but also kinda sad that HTML5 cross platform development never really took off.

Edit: When I said "native code", I meant that Mono allows you to wrap native libraries with greater ease than anything else I've ever encountered.

[JasonFruit]

I'm confused — how is C#.NET a "native code solution"? And what makes you say it's "our best bet"? I've been pretty pleased with PyGTK/PyQT cross-platform development, or, for that matter, Free Pascal LCL applications, if you want actual native code; I find them much less touchy to get working across platforms (though that could be just my relative level of experience with them).

[leafartist]

Have you tired c#.Net recently?

[JasonFruit]

It's been a couple of years; I've been writing for my own satisfaction, and C#, for all its inarguable advantages, is not that much fun.

[adamors]

.NET is definitely not our best bet, because once its out of Windows land, the quality falls sharply. Mono is seriously lacking [1] so does Monodevelop etc.

[1] http://mono-project.com/WPF

[Touche]

.NET isn't native code.

[cwyers]

There are multiple native compilers for .NET. Xamarin uses one for iOS and Android apps (well, in the case of Android, you're compiling to Dalvik bytecode, but it's just as native as any other Android app).

[sochinochi]

Xamarin.Android apps do not compile to Dalvik bytecode. Every app ships with MonoVM which runs side-by-side with Dalvik.

[cwyers]

Thank you for the correction; I seem to have had Xamarin on Android confused with Xamarin on iOS, which does compile to native code.[1]

1) http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/limitatio...

[CmonDev]

Of course it is not. It's a framework. C# on the other hand can compile to native. This is how it works on iOS.

[visualR]

No but you can wrap native UI libraries, the most critical piece that needs to be native. Contrast this with an HTML CSS UI.

[Touche]

You can wrap native UI libraries with just about every language in existence. That's not what people usually mean when they say "native" though. I think they mean precompiled to a binary for a specific architecture.

[visualR]

yeah you can. The whole native vs non native is about whether the UI is native and directly integrates with the platform, not the language or whether there is a runtime.

[Touche]

Err, well the article is about using Mono with GTK, which is not native outside of Gnome.

[visualR]

That's why you'd use monomac, mono touch or wpf on osx,iOS and windows, respectively. Xamarin also has a solution for android.

[rplnt]

What about Qt? With python, C++, whatever...

[CmonDev]

It really does feel like the best bet.