How to decide between MonoTouch and Objective-C? [closed]

Answer 1

I would invest the time in Objective-C mainly because of all the help you can get from sites like this. One of the strength's of Objective-C is that you can use C and C++ code, and there is a lot of projects out there that are well tested.

Another thing is that you're code (language of choice) will be supported by apple. What it iOS 5.x for instance removes the support for a third party solution like MonoTouch? What will you tell your customers then?

Maybe its better to use a platform independent solution like HTML5 if you're not entire ready to move to Objective-C?

Answer 2

As someone with experience with both C# as well as Objective-C, I'd say for most people Xamarin will be well worth the money.

C# is a really good designed language and the C# API's are good designed as well. Of course the Cocoa Touch API's (including UIKit) have great design as well, yet the language could be improved in several ways. When writing in C# you will likely be more productive compared to writing the same code in Objective-C. This is due to several reasons, but some reasons would be:

• C# has type inference. Type inference makes writing code quicker, since you don't have to "know" the type on the left-hand side of an assignment. It also makes refactoring easier and more saver.

• C# has generics, which will reduce errors compared to equivalent Objective-C code (though there are some work-arounds in Objective-C, in most situations developers will avoid them).

• Recently Xamarin added support for Async / Await, which makes writing asynchronous code very easy.

• You'll be able to reuse part of the code base on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

• MonoTouch largely implements the CocoaTouch API's in a very straightforward way. E.g.: if you've got experience with CocoaTouch, you'll know where to find classes for controls in MonoTouch (MonoTouch.UIKit contains classes for UIButton, UIView, UINavigationController, etc..., likewise MonoTouch.Foundation got classes for NSString, NSData, etc...).

• Xamarin will give users a native experience, unlike solutions like PhoneGap or Titanium.

Now Objective-C has some advantages over C#, but in most situations writing apps in C# will generally result in less develop time and cleaner code and less work to port the same app to other platforms. One notable exception might be high-performance games that rely on OpenGL.