How to decide between MonoTouch and Objective-C?

After sitting through a session today on Mono at a local .Net event, the use of MonoTouch was 'touched' upon as an alternative for iPhone development. Being very comfortable in C# and .Net, it seems like an appealing option, despite some of the quirkiness of the Mono stack. However, since MonoTouch costs $400, I'm somewhat torn on if this is the way to go for iPhone development.

Anyone have an experience developing with MonoTouch and Objective-C, and if so is developing with MonoTouch that much simpler and quicker than learning Objective-C, and in turn worth the $400?

I've seen this question (and variations on it) a lot lately. What amazes me is how often people respond, but how few answer.

I have my preferences (I enjoy both stacks), but this is where most "answers" start to go wrong. It shouldn't be about what I want (or what anybody else wants).

Here's how I'd go about determining the value of MonoTouch - I can't be objective, obviously, but I think this is pretty zealotry-free:

• Is this for fun or business? If you wanted to get into consulting in this area, you could make your $399 back very quickly.

• Do you want to learn the platform inside-out, or do you "just" want to write apps for it?

• Do you like .Net enough that using a different dev stack would take the fun out of it for you? Again, I like both stacks (Apple and Mono), but for me MonoTouch makes the experience that much more fun. I haven't stopped using Apple's tools, but that's mainly because I really do enjoy both stacks. I love the iPhone, and I love .Net. In that case, for me, MonoTouch was a no-brainer.

• Do you feel comfortable working with C? I don't mean Objective-C, but C - it matters because Objective-C is C. It's a nice, fancy, friendly OO version, but if pointers give you the heebie-jeebies, MonoTouch is your friend. And don't listen to the naysayers who think you're a dev wuss if it happens that you don't like pointers (or C, etc.). I used to walk around with a copy of the IBM ROM BIOS Pocket Reference, and when I was writing assembly and forcing my computer into funny video modes and writing my own font rendering bits for them and (admittedly trashy) windowing systems, I didn't think the QuickBasic devs were wusses. I was a QuickBasic dev (in addition to the rest). Never give in to nerd machismo. If you don't like C, and if you don't like pointers, and if you want to stay as far away from manual memory management as possible (and, to be fair, it's not bad at all in ObjC), then... MonoTouch. And don't take any guff for it.

• Would you like to target users or businesses? It doesn't matter much to me, but there are still people out there on Edge, and the fact is: you can create a far smaller download package if you use Apple's stack. I've been playing around with MonoTouch, and I have a decent little app going that, once compressed, gets down to about 2.7 MB (when submitting your app for distribution, you zip it - when apps are downloaded from the store, they're zipped - so when figuring out if your app is going to come in under the 10MB OTA limit, zip the sucker first - you WILL be pleasantly surprised with MonoTouch). But, MT happiness aside, half a meg vs. nearly three (for example) is something that might be important to you if you're targeting end users. If you're thinking of enterprise work, a few MB won't matter at all. And, just to be clear - I'm going to be submitting a MT-based app to the store soonishly, and I have no problem whatsoever with the size. Doesn't bother me at all. But if that's something that would concern you, then Apple's stack wins this one.

• Doing any XML work? MonoTouch. Period.

• String manipulation? Date manipulation? A million other little things we've gotten used to with .Net's everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink frameworks? MonoTouch.

• Web services? MonoTouch.

• Syntactically, they both have their advantages. Objective-C tends to be more verbose where you have to write it. You'll find yourself writing code with C# you wouldn't have to write with ObjC, but it goes both ways. This particular topic could fill a book. I prefer C# syntax, but after getting over my initial this-is-otherworldly reaction to Objective-C, I've learned to enjoy it quite a bit. I make fun of it a bit in talks (it is weird for devs who're used to C#/Java/etc.), but the truth is that I have an Objective-C shaped spot in my heart that makes me happy.

• Do you plan to use Interface Builder? Because, even in this early version, I find myself doing far less work to build my UIs with IB and then using them in code. It feels like entire steps are missing from the Objective-C/IB way of doing things, and I'm pretty sure it's because entire steps are missing from the Objective-C/IB way of doing things. So far, and I don't think I've sufficiently tested, but so far, MonoTouch is the winner here for how much less work you have to do.

• Do you think it's fun to learn new languages and platforms? If so, the iPhone has a lot to offer, and Apple's stack will likely get you out of your comfort-zone - which, for some devs, is fun (Hi - I'm one of those devs - I joke about it and give Apple a hard time, but I've had a lot of fun learning iPhone development through Apple's tools).

There are so many things to consider. Value is so abstract. If we're talking about cost and whether it's worth it, the answer comes down to my first bullet item: if this is for business, and if you can get the work, you'll make your money right back.

So... that's about as objective as I can be. This is a short list of what you might ask yourself, but it's a starting point.

Personally (let's drop the objectivity for a moment), I love and use both. And I'm glad I learned the Apple stack first. It was easier for me to get up and running with MonoTouch when I already knew my way around Apple's world. As others have said, you're still going to be working with CocoaTouch - it's just going to be in a .Net-ized environment.

But there's more than that. The people who haven't used MonoTouch tend to stop there - "It's a wrapper blah blah blah" - that's not MonoTouch.

MonoTouch gives you access to what CocoaTouch has to offer while also giving you access to what (a subset of) .Net has to offer, an IDE some people feel more comfortable with (I'm one of them), better integration with Interface Builder, and although you don't get to completely forget about memory-management, you get a nice degree of leeway.

If you aren't sure, grab Apple's stack (it's free), and grab the MonoTouch eval stack (it's free). Until you join Apple's dev program, both will only run against the simulator, but that's enough to help you figure out if you vastly prefer one to the other, and possible whether MonoTouch is, for you, worth the $399.

And don't listen to the zealots - they tend to be the ones who haven't used the technology they're railing against :)

There is a lot of hearsay in this post from developers that have not tried MonoTouch and Objective-C. It seems to be mostly be Objective-C developers that have never tried MonoTouch.

I am obviously biased, but you can check out what the MonoTouch community has been up to in:

http://xamarin.com

There you will find several articles from developers that have developed in both Objective-C and C#.

So, my answer to a previous similar question is to learn Objective-C. (Also, don't forget about debugging support)

> This will probably offend some but to > be honest, if you are going to do any > serious development, you should learn > Objective-C. Not knowing Objective-C > in iPhone development will just be a > hindrance. You won't be able to > understand many examples; you have to > deal with the quirks of Mono whereas > if you had a working knowledge of > Objective-C you could get a lot more > out of the platform documentation. > > Personally, I don't understand the > position that says increasing the > amount of information you need in > favor of using Mono over the > platform's native language. It seems > somewhat counterproductive to me. I > think if this is a very expensive > proposition (learning a new language) > then it may be worthwhile spending > some time on fundamental programming > concepts so that learning new > languages is a fairly cheap > proposition.

Another user also wrote this:

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Monotouch is easier for you now. But harder later.

For example, what happens when new seeds come out you need to test against but break MonoTouch for some reason?

By sticking with Mono, any time you are looking up resources for frameworks you have to translate mentally into how you are going to use them with Mono. Your app binaries will be larger, your development time not that much faster after a few months into Objective-C, and other app developers will have that much more of an advantage over you because they are using the native platform.

Another consideration is that you are looking to use C# because you are more familiar with the language than Objective-C. But the vast majority of the learning curve for the iPhone is not Objective-C, it is the frameworks - which you will have to call into with C# as well.

For any platform, you should use the platform that directly expresses the design philosophy of that platform - on the iPhone, that is Objective-C. Think about this from the reverse angle, if a Linux developer used to programming in GTK wanted to write Windows apps would you seriously recommend that they not use C# and stick to GTK because it was "easier" for them to do so?

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Using Mono is not a crutch. There are many things that it adds to the iPhone OS. LINQ, WCF, sharable code between a Silverlight app, an ASP.NET page, a WPF app, a Windows Form app, and there's also mono for Android and it will work for Windows Mobile as well.

So, you can spend a bunch of time writing Objective-C (You'll see from many studies where the exact same sample code in C# is significantly less to write than OC) and then DUPLICATE it all for other platforms. For me, I chose MonoTouch because the Cloud App I'm writing will have many interfaces, the iPhone being only one of them. Having WCF data streaming from the cloud to MonoTouch app is insanely simple. I have core libraries that are shared among the various platforms and then only need to write a simple presentation layer for the iPhone/WinMobile/Android/SilverLight/WPF/ASP.NET deployments. Recreating it all in Objective-C would be an enormous waste of time both for initial dev and maintenance as the product continues to move forward since all functionality would have to be replicated rather than reused.

The people who are insulting MonoTouch or insinuating that users of it need a crutch are lacking the Big Picture of what it means to have the .NET framework at your fingertips and maybe don't understand proper separation of logic from presentation done in a way that can be reused across platforms and devices.

Objective-C is interesting and very different from many common languages. I like a challenge and learning different approaches... but not when doing so impedes my progress or creates unnecessary re-coding. There are some really great things about the iPhone SDK framework, but all that greatness is fully supported with MonoTouch and cuts out all the manual memory management, reduces the amount of code required to perform the same tasks, allows me to reuse my assemblies, and keeps my options open to be able to move to other devices and platforms.

I switched. Monotouch let's me write apps at least 3-4 times as fast (4 apps per month compared to my old 1 per month in Obj C)

Lots less typing.

Just my experience.

If this is the only iPhone app you will ever develop, and you also have zero interest in developing Mac applications, ever, then MonoTouch is probably worth the cost.

If you think you'll ever develop more iPhone apps, or will ever want to do some Mac native development, it's probably worth it to learn Objective-C and the associated frameworks. Plus, if you're the type of programmer that enjoys learning new things, it's a fun new paradigm to study.

Personally I think you'll have a better time just learning Objective-C.

In short:

• "Learning Objective-C" is not a daunting as you might think, you may even enjoy it after just the first few weeks
• You are already familiar with the "C style" syntax with lots of *&(){}; everywhere
• Apple has done a very good job of documenting things
• You'll be interacting with the iPhone the way Apple intended, which means you'll get the benefits directly from the source not through some filter.

I have found that the projects like Unity and MonoTouch are supposed to "save you time" but ultimately you'll need to learn their domain specific language anyway and will have to side-step things at times. All that is probably going to take you just as long as it would to learn the language you were trying to avoid learning (in calendar time). In the end you didn't save any time and you are tightly coupled to some product.

EDIT: I never meant to imply anything negative about .NET I happen to be a big fan of it. My point is that adding more layers of complexity just because you aren't yet comfortable with the quirky objc bracket notation doesn't really make much sense to me.

2019 update: It's 7 years later. I still feel the same way if not more so. Sure, 'domain specific language' may have been the wrong term to use, but I still believe it's much better to write directly for the platform you are working with and avoid compatibility layers and abstractions as much as possible. If you are worried about code reuse and re-work, generally speaking any functionality your cross platform app needs to perform can probably be accomplished with modern web technologies.

To add to what others have already said (well!): my feeling is that you're basically doubling the number of bugs you have to worry about, adding the ones in MonoTouch to the ones already in iPhone OS. Updating for new OS versions will be even more painful than normal. Yuck, all around.

The only compelling case I can see for MonoTouch is organizations that have lots and lots of C# programmers and C# code lying around that they must leverage on iPhone. (The sort of shop that won't even blink at $3500.)

But for anyone starting out from scratch, I really can't see it as worthwhile or wise.

Three words: Linq to SQL

Yes it is well worth the $.

Something I'd like to add, even though there's an accepted answer - who is to say that Apple won't just reject apps that have signs of being built with Mono Touch?

I would invest the time in Objective-C mainly because of all the help you can get from sites like this. One of the strength's of Objective-C is that you can use C and C++ code, and there is a lot of projects out there that are well tested.

Another thing is that you're code (language of choice) will be supported by apple. What it iOS 5.x for instance removes the support for a third party solution like MonoTouch? What will you tell your customers then?

Maybe its better to use a platform independent solution like HTML5 if you're not entire ready to move to Objective-C?

I've been using MonoTouch for a few months now, I ported my half finished app from ObjectiveC so I could support Android at some point in the future.

Here's my experience:

Bad bits:

• Xamarin Studio. Indie developers such as myself are forced into using Xamarin Studio. It is getting better every week, the developers are very active on the forums identifying and fixing bugs, but it's still very slow, frequently hangs, has a lot of bugs and debugging is pretty slow also.

• Build times. Building my large (linked) app to debug on a device can take a few minutes, this is compared to XCode which deploys almost immediately. Building for the simulator (non-linked) is a bit quicker.

• MonoTouch issues. I've experienced memory leak issues caused by the event handling, and have had to put in some pretty ugly workarounds to prevent the leaks, such as attaching and detaching events when entering and leaving views. The Xamarin developers are actively looking into issues like this.

• 3rd party libraries. I've spent quite a time converting/binding ObjectiveC libraries to use in my app, although this is getting better with automated software such as Objective Sharpie.

• Larger binaries. This doesn't really bother me but thought I'd mention it. IMO a couple of extra Mb is nothing these days.

Good bits:

• Multi-platform. My friend is happily creating an Android version of my app from my core codebase, we're developing in parallel and are committing to a remote Git repository on Dropbox, it's going well.

• .Net. Working in C# .Net is much nicer than Objective C IMO.

• MonoTouch. Pretty much everything in iOS is mirrored in .Net and it's fairly straight forward to get things working.

• Xamarin. You can see that these guys are really working to improve everything, making development smoother and easier.

I definitely recommend Xamarin for cross platform development, especially if you have the money to use the Business or Enterprise editions that work with Visual Studio.

If you're solely creating an iPhone app that will never be needed on another platform, and you're an Indie developer, I'd stick with XCode and Objective C for now.

As someone with experience with both C# as well as Objective-C, I'd say for most people Xamarin will be well worth the money.

C# is a really good designed language and the C# API's are good designed as well. Of course the Cocoa Touch API's (including UIKit) have great design as well, yet the language could be improved in several ways. When writing in C# you will likely be more productive compared to writing the same code in Objective-C. This is due to several reasons, but some reasons would be:

• C# has type inference. Type inference makes writing code quicker, since you don't have to "know" the type on the left-hand side of an assignment. It also makes refactoring easier and more saver.

• C# has generics, which will reduce errors compared to equivalent Objective-C code (though there are some work-arounds in Objective-C, in most situations developers will avoid them).

• Recently Xamarin added support for Async / Await, which makes writing asynchronous code very easy.

• You'll be able to reuse part of the code base on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

• MonoTouch largely implements the CocoaTouch API's in a very straightforward way. E.g.: if you've got experience with CocoaTouch, you'll know where to find classes for controls in MonoTouch (MonoTouch.UIKit contains classes for UIButton, UIView, UINavigationController, etc..., likewise MonoTouch.Foundation got classes for NSString, NSData, etc...).

• Xamarin will give users a native experience, unlike solutions like PhoneGap or Titanium.

Now Objective-C has some advantages over C#, but in most situations writing apps in C# will generally result in less develop time and cleaner code and less work to port the same app to other platforms. One notable exception might be high-performance games that rely on OpenGL.

The cost of the MonoTouch library is entirely beside the point. The reason you shouldn't use Mono for your iPhone apps, is that it is a crutch. If you can't be bothered to learn the native tools, then I have no reason to believe that your product is worth downloading.

Edit: 4/14/2010 Applications written with MonoTouch aren't eligible for the iTunes Store. This is as it should be. Apple saw plenty of shallow ports on the Mac, using cross-platform toolkits like Qt, or Adobe's own partial re-implementation of the System 7 toolbox, and the long and short of it is they're just not good enough.