[Mono-list] future of Mono

[Matthew Winter]

On 31/05/2011, at 11:03 PM, jmalcolm wrote:

> 
> ArmchairBronco wrote:
>> 
>> Matthew, I'm curious why you think you can't use MonoTouch now. I'm still
>> operating under the assumption that MonoTouch will still be a viable
>> solution for me. I'm sure that that there will be bumps in the road, and
>> there may be some issues that I can't work around, but my view is that
>> "the community" at large will still be able to help us find solutions to a
>> lot of issues.

The community is certainly not a concern, I have read many blog posts praising MonoTouch which was one of the reasons I started to make use of the trial product.


>> 
>> I just dropped $399 a few hours ago, and my view is that if Attachmate or
>> Novell or whoever is willing to take my money TODAY then the bits I paid
>> for are still usable.  Years and years ago, I was a devoted user of
>> HomeSite.  I cried when Macromedia bought them, and sure enough, that was
>> it for new upgrades to HomeSite, but that old version still lasted for
>> many years before I finally retired it from daily use. I'm hoping to get
>> at least a year out of MonoTouch before it's truly "obsolete".
>> 
>> Or am I just being overly optimistic or naive?


My biggest concern is purely upgrades. I have read many tweets/posts suggesting that Attachmate/Novell are not activating new licenses (I have no proof this is true other than the number of posts), and since the core development team is no longer a part of Attachmate/Novell I see no way they could produce an update for iOS 5. Suggesting the product will quickly become outdated. (Lets say by the end of the keynote at WWDC).


>> 
> 
> I am with you. MonoTouch is a polished product now. Even without another
> update, it is easily worth the license fee ($399) to be able to use C#
> instead of Objective-C for the next year.
> 
> Xamarin says that their upcoming product will work with my MonoTouch
> code-base so my effort is not wasted. I will have a path forward. If it
> really takes less than six months for the Xamarin product to arrive, I am
> betting that I can transition to it before any major issues appear (like
> support for iOS 5 or something).

6 months is a very long time, easily enough time for me to convert what I have done into Objective-C and complete the App.

I am sure the product produced by Xamarin will be as polished if not more so. Finishing this app in Objective-C will not stop me from using the Xamarin product for future Apps.



Matt