[Cocoa-sharp] The State of the Art

[Andrew Satori]

Let me be clear, I think the project could be great, my issues are  
not with Geoff and the CocoaSharp guys, they are not with the Mono  
project in general. They are very specific to a core developer who  
delights in being an ass to people that aren't as bright or talented  
as he is, and those who don't live and die OSS.  I write code for a  
living, and don't have the time to play his games. 'File a Bug',  
'Submit a Patch', 'Quit Whining'.

Conceptually, I like everything about the idea of Cocoa-Sharp, and in  
truth, Cocoa Sharp is NOT the problem.  The problem is that the state  
of Mono on the Mac is a problem.  Let's talk about what doesn't work.

Mono has a debugger, it doesn't work on the Mac and under the current  
leadership, and without significant contribution by a Mac developer  
with the know-how and financial ability to sit down and write a Mac  
friendly debugger, no current Windows C# dev's are going to convert.

Mono has an IDE, it doesn't work well on the Mac because of missing  
features and the requirement of having most of a working Gnome  
desktop under X11.  Xcode works fine as a code editor, and with  
CocoaSharp it's fine (up to a point) but again, without the work of  
some dedicated dev's and a little help / support from Apple, you'll  
never bring Xcode up to a reasonable level. (all of the plumbing  
exists, but it's poorly documented if it's documented at all).

ASP.NET is unreliable in anything but single user cases under OS X  
because it's never been really tested.

Simple things in the Mono for Mac code continue to get fixed and  
broken because few of the core developers use a Mac as a primary  
platform.

All of that said, the problems could be fixed, but my conclusion was  
that the Mac community is not large enough to warrant the effort from  
Novell who has hitched their wagon to Linux.  Apple has proven to be  
uninterested in addressing the issues from there side, and from what  
I gather has rebuffed efforts from the Mono guys to get them  
involved. The work the Geoff, Urs, Adhamh, and Calvin have done is  
fantastic and much appreciated, but like me, these are all guys that  
have full-time jobs that we have to do first, and being the whipping  
boy for trying to fix things just doesn't encourage me to jump in and  
try to fix things.

I like C# (I use it on Windows all the time)

I like the Mac (I use it every day to run Windows Dev tools via  
Parallels)

I like Xcode (I use it every day to write Objective C, C and C++ code  
for both Windows and the Mac)

I like Mono (I just don't use it because the number of little  
niggling things that remain broken make doing so so time consuming  
that it's faster, and easier to just run VS.NET in Parallels (eg,  
ODBC is *STILL* broken because the CONFIG file doesn't in fact load  
like it's *supposed* to, and fixing it so that it works the way it  
works, not the way it's *supposed* to work makes you an idiot in the  
eyes of a certain core developer, who then blames the whole damned  
thing upon you because your were patching it to work rather than  
filing a bug, but I digress)

I think CocoaSharp has enormous potential if either one or both,  
Apple & Novell would through serious effort at the Mac platform with  
Mono. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, and therefore I  
cannot personally commit to Mono & Mac.

Andy




On Feb 23, 2007, at 4:56 AM, Stefano Falda wrote:

> Hi,
> I've switched to Mac just 1 month ago, and immediately, being a  
> Win32 software developer, I checked how to write for the Mac... and  
> what I've found...
>
> Objective-C
>
> Ok, maybe it's a nice language and all, but I find its syntax quite  
> "confusing"...
>
> Anyway, because I've already developed some software in C# i  
> checked the Mono version for OsX and of course the cocoa-sharp  
> implementation...
>
> After some weeks of lurking this mailing list I wonder:
>
> is Mono + Cocoa Sharp a viable solution to develop Mac OsX graphics  
> application or not?
>
> I see a lot of bitterness in the words of the former contributor of  
> the project, so I wonder is the cocoa-sharp a still active project  
> or just a sinking ship?
>
> What's the state of the implementation?
> This is not clear to me...
>
> What can WE do?
>
> I understand how Andy feels, but maybe we can gather together and  
> found a way to make the project go on and be really useful, because  
> I (and I think many programmers) just can't afford to invest in  
> learning and using something that has no future...
>
> Of course I know that everybody is working for free on the cocoa- 
> sharp project and I really appreciate their work, but I think we  
> all have to really understand where this project is going...
>
> Thank you
>
> Stefano
>
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