We’ve talked, in the past, about developing HTML and JavaScript iPhone apps. Now it’s time to talk about .Net iPhone app development.Monday Novell will release a developers kit that leverages MonoTouch which allows developers to utilize code and libraries written for .Net and programming languages like C#.
“What’s important here is that C# and .Net are considerably more productive development environments than the native iPhone language, which is Objective-C,” said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of the developer platform at Novell and the leader of the Mono project. With MonoTouch, the Mono runtime provides such developer services as garbage collection, thread management, type safety, and Web services, de Icaza said.
“MonoTouch brings a new option to the table,” Hilwa said. “I would say that applications closest to the metal will continue to be written in Objective-C, but where developers want to target multiple platforms, including apps that cross over between desktop and mobile, MonoTouch allows them that portability. Of course, the big win with it is that it opens the door for some 5 million .Net developers to begin to do iPhone applications.”
MonoTouch Enterprise Edition is available for a one-year subscription for $999. About 2,000 persons have been signed up for the MonoTouch beta program, which began in early August.
[via InfoWorld ]