12 ms·

There was no discussion of async/await in here which is one of the best things C# has going for it. When I meet other devs and tell them I work in lots of lang

There was no discussion of async/await in here which is one of the best things C# has going for it. When I meet other devs and tell them I work in lots of languages and platforms but prefer c# they usually look at me like I have 3 heads. I like to show them LINQ and Async as some things I really like about C#, then I get into how rich the BCL itself is. Devs are also pretty shocked when I tell them I can write truly 100% native iOS and Android apps in C# (thank you Xamarin) and that one of the most popular mobile game engines (Unity) uses C# and a version of the .NET Framework under the hood.

manojlds 13y ago
There is also the "dynamic" part of C# and the DLR. Here is a library I worked on to mainly showcase the dynamic features - https://github.com/manojlds/cmd https://github.com/manojlds/cmd
profquail 13y ago
Xamarin now also supports writing iOS and Android apps in F#; it's only a "preview" at the moment, but some of the Mono developers have been getting more involved in the F# open-source community and Xamarin recently hired a well-known, very skilled F# contractor to help improve their support for the language. Xamarin's website has a bit more information: http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/fsharp/fsharp_support_overview/ http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/fsharp/fsharp_...
nbevans 13y ago
It's funny when you tell hipsters about .NET. They get really shocked at just how good it is. A lot of people dismiss .NET because it's backed by Microsoft. It really sucks that these people can't just look at the technology for what it is rather than dismiss it based upon who created it. As an aside... whilst C# takes a lot of the public .NET praise, F# is the real hero in the making. When I show F# to some hipsters they get very unsettled very quickly as suddenly they realise all that shitty Ruby and JavaScript they've been writing for years is probably not going to be anywhere near as employable in another 10 years, maybe, hopefully. Interesting times indeed. And yes, Xamarin is awesome and Microsoft seriously needs to bring that great firm under their wing. Writing your mobile apps per platform is a major violation of DRY principles and is utterly ridiculous.
- keithwarren 13y ago
  I have an ongoing bet with a few friends on when and who will buy Xamarin. In April my bet was 18 months they would be bought by Microsoft or Amazon. I still lean Amazon.
  - LammyL 13y ago
    Why would xamarin want to sell? What advantage would it bring them?
    - scribu 13y ago
      Lots of money?
    - ciupicri 13y ago
      > In summer of 1997, he [Miguel de Icaza] was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team (to work on a SPARC port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa. He declared in an interview that he tried to persuade his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did so with their own browser. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software_... So perhaps Miguel would like working for Microsoft again.
  - nbevans 13y ago
    I hold out hope that the next Microsoft CEO won't be as blind as Ballmer was and that the first thing on his hit list will be to buy Xamarin or at least "secure" it to prevent anyone else buying it; a suitably large investment could do that. Xamarin would provide the perfect solution to getting a major foothold on mobile app developers, which is what Microsoft so desperately needs for their Windows Phone aspirations. Once you have developer mindshare, you have cracked half the problem.
    - gesman 13y ago
      Why would MSFT needs Xamarin if their own tools are exceptionally good?
artmageddon 13y ago
I'll throw in my 2 cents about Xamarin: I'm amazed at how well it really works. I'm involved in a project right now developing a mobile app for Android that uses a USB-connected sensor to do color analysis. It's all been done in C#, and it's so nice to know that when we want an iOS version of this, we just have to do the storyboarding. Once that part's done, the app will already be fully-tested and ready to go. FYI, I highly recommend Stuart Lodge's MvvmCross for this: https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/ http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/
senthil_rajasek 13y ago
I am interested to know more about developer experiences with Xamarin. can you share some apps (ios, android ) that you have developed using xamarin?
- 300bps 13y ago
  Look here for samples: http://xamarin.com/apps http://xamarin.com/apps
coolsunglasses 13y ago
async/await is nice, but futures/promises and core.async in Clojure are more powerful and useful.
- profquail 13y ago
  Citation please? Clojure has some awesome libraries, but unless you can show some use cases where futures/promises and core.async make it possible (or even just easier) to implement functionality compared to async/await (or F# async) I'm not inclined to take your word for it.
  - profquail 13y ago
    Replying to myself, since I can't edit my post anymore -- Futures and promises aren't unique to Clojure. For example, AliceML had them ages ago. After thinking it over, I'm going try implementing them for my ExtCore library for F# (https://github.com/jack-pappas/ExtCore https://github.com/jack-pappas/ExtCore). Thanks to the GP for the idea.
  - _halgari 13y ago
    CSP gives you everything async/await gives you, plus more. Channels can act as throw away promises, or as continual streams of events. Add to that the power of alt! (http://clojure.github.io/core.async/#clojure.core.async/alt! http://clojure.github.io/core.async/#clojure.core.async/alt!) and you got some very powerful primitives. There's nothing about async/await that's really new. You can implement these on top of yield (C#/Python), or with any language that supports the pausing and resuming of execution. In Clojure CSP is implemented as a library (core.async), no changes to the compiler needed. Now that's power. (disclosure, I helped write core.async)
    - profquail 13y ago
      I agree, async is much more flexible and powerful when it's a library feature (as it is in F#) as opposed to being a built-in language feature (as it is in C# 5). core.async looks very well-rounded, congratulations on a fine job.

manojlds 13y ago

There is also the "dynamic" part of C# and the DLR. Here is a library I worked on to mainly showcase the dynamic features - https://github.com/manojlds/cmd https://github.com/manojlds/cmd

profquail 13y ago

Xamarin now also supports writing iOS and Android apps in F#; it's only a "preview" at the moment, but some of the Mono developers have been getting more involved in the F# open-source community and Xamarin recently hired a well-known, very skilled F# contractor to help improve their support for the language. Xamarin's website has a bit more information: http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/fsharp/fsharp_support_overview/ http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/fsharp/fsharp_...

nbevans 13y ago

It's funny when you tell hipsters about .NET. They get really shocked at just how good it is. A lot of people dismiss .NET because it's backed by Microsoft. It really sucks that these people can't just look at the technology for what it is rather than dismiss it based upon who created it. As an aside... whilst C# takes a lot of the public .NET praise, F# is the real hero in the making. When I show F# to some hipsters they get very unsettled very quickly as suddenly they realise all that shitty Ruby and JavaScript they've been writing for years is probably not going to be anywhere near as employable in another 10 years, maybe, hopefully. Interesting times indeed. And yes, Xamarin is awesome and Microsoft seriously needs to bring that great firm under their wing. Writing your mobile apps per platform is a major violation of DRY principles and is utterly ridiculous.

keithwarren 13y ago
I have an ongoing bet with a few friends on when and who will buy Xamarin. In April my bet was 18 months they would be bought by Microsoft or Amazon. I still lean Amazon.
- LammyL 13y ago
  Why would xamarin want to sell? What advantage would it bring them?
  - scribu 13y ago
    Lots of money?
  - ciupicri 13y ago
    > In summer of 1997, he [Miguel de Icaza] was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team (to work on a SPARC port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa. He declared in an interview that he tried to persuade his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did so with their own browser. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software_... So perhaps Miguel would like working for Microsoft again.
- nbevans 13y ago
  I hold out hope that the next Microsoft CEO won't be as blind as Ballmer was and that the first thing on his hit list will be to buy Xamarin or at least "secure" it to prevent anyone else buying it; a suitably large investment could do that. Xamarin would provide the perfect solution to getting a major foothold on mobile app developers, which is what Microsoft so desperately needs for their Windows Phone aspirations. Once you have developer mindshare, you have cracked half the problem.
  - gesman 13y ago
    Why would MSFT needs Xamarin if their own tools are exceptionally good?

artmageddon 13y ago

I'll throw in my 2 cents about Xamarin: I'm amazed at how well it really works. I'm involved in a project right now developing a mobile app for Android that uses a USB-connected sensor to do color analysis. It's all been done in C#, and it's so nice to know that when we want an iOS version of this, we just have to do the storyboarding. Once that part's done, the app will already be fully-tested and ready to go. FYI, I highly recommend Stuart Lodge's MvvmCross for this: https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/ http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/

senthil_rajasek 13y ago

I am interested to know more about developer experiences with Xamarin. can you share some apps (ios, android ) that you have developed using xamarin?

300bps 13y ago
Look here for samples: http://xamarin.com/apps http://xamarin.com/apps

coolsunglasses 13y ago

async/await is nice, but futures/promises and core.async in Clojure are more powerful and useful.

profquail 13y ago
Citation please? Clojure has some awesome libraries, but unless you can show some use cases where futures/promises and core.async make it possible (or even just easier) to implement functionality compared to async/await (or F# async) I'm not inclined to take your word for it.
- profquail 13y ago
  Replying to myself, since I can't edit my post anymore -- Futures and promises aren't unique to Clojure. For example, AliceML had them ages ago. After thinking it over, I'm going try implementing them for my ExtCore library for F# (https://github.com/jack-pappas/ExtCore https://github.com/jack-pappas/ExtCore). Thanks to the GP for the idea.
- _halgari 13y ago
  CSP gives you everything async/await gives you, plus more. Channels can act as throw away promises, or as continual streams of events. Add to that the power of alt! (http://clojure.github.io/core.async/#clojure.core.async/alt! http://clojure.github.io/core.async/#clojure.core.async/alt!) and you got some very powerful primitives. There's nothing about async/await that's really new. You can implement these on top of yield (C#/Python), or with any language that supports the pausing and resuming of execution. In Clojure CSP is implemented as a library (core.async), no changes to the compiler needed. Now that's power. (disclosure, I helped write core.async)
  - profquail 13y ago
    I agree, async is much more flexible and powerful when it's a library feature (as it is in F#) as opposed to being a built-in language feature (as it is in C# 5). core.async looks very well-rounded, congratulations on a fine job.