Open source .NET mimic lands on Android

Agreed

I don't know if Microsoft intends to use patents to torpedo Mono any more or not (they certainly planned to initially.) But, I think they've made it quite clear they are not truly interested in cross-platform compatibility, they wanted to SAY they supported it to try to knock out Java and other truly cross-platform development environments, while making sure Windows always runs .NET better. They have added all sorts of functionality in each .NET release, unlike truly cross-platform environemnts they have no concern on whether the bulk of it is just a thin wrapper around a bunch of native code (i.e. not at all portable) or if it is written for the CLR (Common Language Runtime -- i.e. actually portable code.)

For instance, Java has some platform-specific 3D support -- it wraps around either OpenGL or DirectX. At the end of the day, the kind of stuff that would use this 3D toolkit wouldn't work with some software rendering backend written in Java, it wouldn't have nearly enough speed (I don't know, there might be a software rendering fallback anyway...) .NET? Windows Forms, GDI, DirectX hooks, and on and on. Instead of reimplementing most of the stuff as actual portable code, it in fact is fairly thin layers over the same old Windows DLLs, with Microsoft continuing to insist it's portable.

Porting Mono to Android can't hurt. But I wouldn't write anything new with it.

Fighting a rear guard action

I have to laugh reading the usual rhetoric. It never ceases to amaze me how religious bigotry never dies. How many technologies were mentioned in the previous 9 articles. And that's a good thing? So someone has to put an alternative point of view.

I don't know if MonoDroid will be a success or not but the work of the mono team to bring C# and many of the .NET objects to other platform has the potential to bring many benefits - though not if you worship your own god.

If you went to the GDC earlier this year, you'll that Mono has a surprisingly significant life in the gaming community.

Why? Because a core set of .NET functionality is now available on Linux, the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and, of course, Windows (there's even a version of Silverlight available, grudgingly, for S60).

The Mono team are at pains to point out that they've not made the UI portable because the approaches taken by providers of the different platforms. Even so, the different UIs can be developed using the same syntax - including event handing, anonymous methods, lambda functions, Linq, the parallel task library, and so on.

However the bulk of the code in applications I work on is on the backend and here it maybe possible to use the same code across all these platforms. That's attractive. Supporting multiple platforms is hugely expensive and removes focus where it should be - on functionality.

So it seems to me Stallman's cause may be worthy, but lost because it enforces a focus on diversity not on application functionality. This orientation of variety over excellence has been, for me, why Linux has not been as successful on the desktop as it should have been.

By the way, Guitierez having a pop at Android only affects users in the US where Microsoft's patents can be enforced. So some 91% of the world's population are not affected by this action.

Last thing I need

is for my phone to catch mono. It actually sounds more like MRSA, or some flesh-eating infection.

If you want to write portable code, just don't use .NET!

Curious...

Sounds interesting, but the problem with cross platform applications is that different platforms have a different look and feel, not to mention different hardware features. There are already plenty of applications showing up on Android which are a straight ports of the older iphone apps and they're generally horrible. The user interfaces look like they are sponsored by Crayola and standard Android behaviour such as pressing "menu" inside an application to access settings are replaced by a sodding great "settings" button on the main screen.

go away already mono

that horrible piece of bait again? for once, stallman is right. I wouldnt touch mono if you put a gun to my head.

wrong

C# is a great langauge and mono has been around for years, it is a well respected and fairly mature technology. I think most here are just dissing it because it's MS.

If Stallman hates it, my automatic preference is to disagree but even without that, an objective reasoning shows mono is pretty cool.

Sirius' answer puts it better.

Great.. we'll have .NET on ChromeOS

I’m a little disappointed that Mono has not been mentioned as an alternative to the Oracle litigation against the right to use the Java language. The truth is that nobody will buy an Android phone in preference to a Windows phone simply because it can run CLR (ISO name for .NET) code.. so Mono Droid is clear far into the future.

The same cannot be said for Java, where Oracle is determined to smash Davlik, because Davlik is a real and present danger to the jolly Java revenue model.

It is fair to say through that there are better tools for Android phone development.. the interesting possibility though must be mono on ChromeOS.. because Android dax is a first-step

Hmm

I may be wrong but I don't believe Mono has yet got to the level of .NET 3.5? Until then it's pretty useless... half the fun of C# is in the LINQ/lambdas

Stallman, Android?

It makes me smile, all these Stallman fanactics above dissing C# and Mono on Android. But failing to mention that Stallman doesn't even approve of Android, mobile phones or even most Linux distros. And don't even mention Cloud computing. You see, he's paranoid about big brother and the erosion of democracy, except in Venezuela of course ;-))