[Mono-list] Does Mono Basic support lag behind C#?

[Timotheus Pokorra]

Hello Michael,

> I fear that C# will be too verbose in syntax / not productive and efficient
> enough, so wish to see if the Mono Basic support lags at all behind the
> primary language C#.
I guess that a language itself is not about efficiency, but the
compiler creates binary code that is efficient.
Of course if people are used to and experienced in a certain language,
then there code will be easier to read for them.

> I said Primary is Xubuntu. Target platforms will include Windows at first,
> perhaps others later. So I would need to understand the Windows run-time
> requirements. I hope to be able to build without any use of paid license
> software... aka VisualStudio. Will this be possible targeting a Windows
> run-time platform? Thank you.

There is some Visual Basic support in Mono, but I have not used it
myself and cannot say if it works for everything.
I recently built the mono-basic package on OBS:
http://www.pokorra.de/2013/12/easy-installation-of-current-mono-and-monodevelop-for-all-major-linux-distributions/comment-page-1/#comment-172
There is some activity on the mono-basic git repository:
https://github.com/mono/mono-basic/commits/master

But then this page:
http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/application_fundamentals/pcl/portable_visual_basic_net/
says:
"Xamarin iOS and Android projects do not natively support Visual
Basic; however developers can use Portable Class Libraries to migrate
existing Visual Basic code to iOS and Android, or to write significant
portion of their application logic in Visual Basic."

On the other hand, if you develop for example with SharpDevelop on
Windows (http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/), you should be
able to compile the VisualBasic code on Windows and use the binary
dlls on Linux.

The other big question is the use of the GUI library for the client.
Windows.Forms is not recommended on Mono at all, no development
anymore.
I don't know about WPF on Mono. Ah, not implemented:
http://www.mono-project.com/WPF
I personally am targeting now browser based only client
(HTML/Javascript) accessing the server through asmx webservices, then
I have no problem with different operating systems at the client side.

Hope this helps,
  Timotheus