Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Apple Objective-c for Microsoft .NET developers

Back cover of most recent MSDN magazine (part of Microsoft Developers subscription)
has a full page advertising for a free e-book

"Objective-C Succinctly: iOS development for .NET Developers"

.

There are many more free e-books in the same format (about 100 pages) available at www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal

Maybe Microsoft does not mind sharing info about Apples "private" language,
since its arcane syntax may convince more people that C# is better.

Somebody could create "translator" of Objective-C to C#,
or at least to C++, with iOS APIs replaced with equivalent WinRT APIs...
That could be worth $millions for Microsoft now...

In fact, this is already done. There is a "front-end" for gcc (Gnu C compiler) that converts Objective-C to portable C... Still, platform APIs are not portable...


It is useful to learn another platform even if that is not immediately used...

iOS and Objective-c have a unique advantage of using the same,
very efficient, platform for both OS and applications.
No complicated COM or other interfaces and serialization, no virtual machines.
End result: faster apps, longer battery life.

On the other side, speed is not biggest issue. It is "Apps."
Many useful apps, and a reputation that "there is an app for it..."

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