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Herding Code 95: MonoDroid with Miguel and the Mono gang

Hey, it’s a bunch of Mono guys! That’s always fun. This time they’re talking about MonoDroid. Joining the gang this week are Miguel de Icaza, Joseph Hill, Geoff Norton, and Mike Kestner talk about developing .NET applications for the Android platform with Mono.

  • Jon asks about where MonoDroid is at in the product lifecycle.
  • Jon asks about the install experience, which currently requires installing a few dependencies to get set up. Miguel and Joseph clarify that it’s a pretty simple setup, and explain why it currently works that way.
  • We talk about the File / New Project experience, and how MonoDroid projects are structured.
  • Miguel describes the API flavor for MonoDroid, and how it follows the MonoTouch and GTK# approach of keeping pretty close to the underlying API’s and pipeline – e.g. accessing images as resources. Mike talks about how API is mapped to run on the .NET primitives and collections.
  • The guys talk about how software architectures vary across iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7. Miguel and Geoff talk about the difficulty in building real-world applications which are can share back-end code across platforms.
  • The talk shifts to nerdy details about how .NET code is being deployed to the Java-based Android platform and a discussion of  the performance impacts of crossing those boundaries.
  • Geoff and Mike talk about the challenges of integrating the different platforms.
  • Kevin asks about what MonoDroid brings to the Android platform, since the Java runtime is already kind of similar to .NET. Miguel talks about how they’ve seen even higher developers interest in MonoDroid than MonoTouch, and everyone speculates about why that might be.
  • Scott K asks about some of the challenges in implementing Mono on Android, and Mike digs into the differences in generics between .NET and Java.
  • K. Scott asks about the ability to wrap or extend the Mono.Android API’s.
  • Kevin asks about rather underlying services are exposed as native API’s or generalized API’s. Miguel explains why it’s necessary to expose at the native API level.
  • Kevin asks more about how code can be shared between MonoDroid and MonoTouch projects.
  • Jon asks about whether they’re looking at anything for Windows Phone 7. Miguel talks about the possibility of adding unsupported API’s, and Geoff talks about how this has been pretty popular on Windows XBox.
  • Greg Shackles asks a question via Twitter about how developers can get involved and contribute to both Mono and MonoDroid.
  • Geoff talks about the MonoMac project.
  • K. Scott asks if there’s still support for PowerPC in Mono.
  • Sara Chipps asks whether iPhone or Androids are more difficult to support. The surprising answer: neither!
  • Everyone talks about how people will actually buy apps on their phones, and the iCircuit app comes up as an example of a great MonoTouch app that’s making some money.
  • Kevin asks about the pricing for MonoDroid. The word is that it’ll be pretty similar to MonoTouch.
  • Miguel mentions Manos de Mono from Jackson Harper.
  • Scott K asks about plans for other phone platforms. Joseph says the plan is to go where developers go.

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Download / Listen:

Herding Code 95: MonoDroid with Miguel and the Mono gang

[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0095-MonoDroid-with-Miguel-de-Icaza-and-the-Mono-gang.mp3]
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Herding Code 94: Silverlight and HTML5

Artwork by Adam Kinney

This week on Herding Code, the guys talk to Adam Kinney and Rick Barraza about how Silverlight fits into a world where HTML5 is finally becoming a reality.

  • Jon asks about Adam and Rick’s opinions on the recent post on the Silverlight Team Blog about the future of Silverlight
  • Adam talks about he sees consumer applications and games as great applications of Silverlight
  • Rick talks about how how some developers are resistant to change, then talks about the longterm evolution of the internet from information provider, to application provider, and finally to operating system
  • Adam and Rick talk about the Wired Article titled The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet.
  • The talk shifts Silverlight as an application platform, not just a web plugin
  • Jon asks how likely it is to be able to reuse Silverlight across web, phone, and out-of-browser applications
  • Rick talks about The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It
  • The talk shifts to discussion over how cross-platform HTML5 can be when it’s limited by things like video codecs and browser targeting
  • Scott Koon talks about how HTML5 is a loose collection of many different technologies
  • Scott Koon asks where the live Silverlight apps are – he just doesn’t see them in the wild
  • Adam and Rick talks about the advantages of developing in Silverlight vs. HTML5. Rick talks about the lack of tooling for HTML5
  • Kevin asks about the enterprise advantages of Silverlight development
  • The guys talk about the differences between canvas/bitmap graphics vs. SVG/vector graphics
  • Jon and Rick talk about the importance of having access to low level building blocks so you can build what you need
  • Scott K asks what’s left that Silverlight does that HTML5 doesn’t offer. Rick talks about the tooling, Adam talks about consistent cross-browser support.
  • Scott K asks about MVVM and whether Silverlight’s been taken over by architecture astronauts and propellerheads rather than the designers. Adam and Jon talk about how MVVM can make life easier for designers as well.
  • K Scott talks about his experiences with an enterprise Silverlight application
  • Rick talks about being a samurai rather than a swordsman – don’t be married to your tools
  • Rick says that the biggest advantage of Silverlight is that it’s a programming language which was designed for applications rather than HTML which was designed for documents
  • Scott K and Kevin ask whether Silverlight makes sense in public web applications
  • Jon asks Adam and Rick about what they’ve been building with HTML5 and what they like about that development experience
  • Rick and Adam talks about the changing environment and how the rich vs. reach question has changed

Show Links:

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 94: Silverlight and HTML5

[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0094-Silverlight-and-HTML5.mp3]