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Mono for Android is now out [Write Android application in Microsoft's .NET and C# languages]

Categories: Android
By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 at 10:51 AM
csharp

Novell has just announced that Mono for Android is now available. What exactly does it do? If you’re a developer who writes applications using either Microsoft’s .NET or C# programming languages then you now no longer have to learn how to write Android applications using that bastardized version of Java called Dalvik. Just wrap your mobile app up with Mono and boom, it’ll run. This is important because Mono is already out for iOS, so you can effectively write one application and deploy it on two different platforms with little tweaking. The dirty details: it’s going to cost you $399 per developer per year for a professional license or $999 per developer per year for an enterprise license. The difference between the two licenses? No idea.

People who work for major Fortune 500 companies will find this news exciting, but for the rest of us … either learn how to write your application using the native language of the device you plan to deploy it on or better yet write it in HTML5 and deploy it on your company’s intranet so that any device, even something running Palm’s webOS or RIM’s BlackBerry platform, can use your app. It’s what all the cool kids are doing, that and you don’t have to worry about making sure people have the latest version of your app or worry if sensitive data that lives in your company’s server farm gets leaked out in the open.

In other related news, if you care about learning Microsoft’s programming languages then you should pick up Silverlight. It’s what powers Windows Phone 7, will soon power the XBOX 360, and of course it’s bundled by default with each and every computer that runs the latest versions of Windows. There’s more of a future in that language than either .NET or C#, depending on what it is you plan to do with your app of course.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • http://twitter.com/franz899 franz899

    “There’s more of a future in that language than either .NET or C#, depending on what it is you plan to do with your app of course.”
    What? Silverlight RUN under the .NET framework, and you MUST use C# or VB.NET from programming.

    Please, don’t do news on programming language if you don’t know of what you are talking about.

  • Ivan

    Totally agree with franz899… dude, you clearly don’t know much about .NET, so get your facts straight first. First of all, .NET is not a programming language, it’s a framework… which uses languages like C#, VB.NET, Visual C++, etc.

    Furthermore, given how many developers use C# (if stackoverflow.com’s numbers are any indication, it’s a lot) it’s relevant news not only for Fortune 500 companies.

    Please, tell me this post is your late, late April Fool’s joke!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R3TV5DSUO2EWFFKT4ZQ7IPKZKI awerg

    What a moron. This guy has no clue what he is talking about. .net is the most widely used platform in the world I believe. To write any meaningful application on WP or Windows(you know the OS that 90%+ of the population uses), you need to know .net, or at least Java. Java and C# are also very similar, with perhaps some slight differences in the API libraries. There is also no special version of Java that you need to learn to write android apps. Dalvik is a Java virtual machine designed and written by Dan Bornstein at Google, that is optimized for low memory requirements. Code written for Android is straight-up Java, which is then run within the Dalvik VM. “bastardized version of Java” lol Stefan needs to stick to writing articles for the iDumbs, where they wont know the difference.