macOS Which Language ??

[Fritzables]

Hi All,

Well... I have just bought my first Apple products. It's one of the new iMac units - hope to see the delivery during next week.

I have been an avid programmer using the Windows environment, Visual Studio C#. I like to develop applications for the OS I am working on.

So, seeing that I will be in a new OS and would like to write apps for iMac/iPod what is available for the iMac, knowing that I am fluent with C# ?

Cheers
Pete

 

[jiminaus]

Generally Mac OS X and iOS applications are written in Objective-C using XCode. XCode 3 is included on your Mac OS X installation DVD. XCode 4 is available via the Mac App Store.

You can also check out Mono. It will let you code in C# on both the Mac and the iPhone. I don't know if acceptable to submit Mono apps to the either of the app stores though.

 

[ehoui]

Based on your background and where you want to run your apps, I second Objective C. Apple has on-line tutorials that will get you started, including building your first Mac OS X and iOS apps.

http://developer.apple.com/resources/

 

[Blakeasd]

You can submit Mono apps to the mac app store

 

[Mac_Max]

And with Mono Touch you can create iPhone apps as well .

 

[subsonix]

Learn Obj-C, Cocoa and Xcode and get access to the platform frameworks and tools directly. I would consider Mono in case of doing a "lazy" port.

 

[fernandovalente]

I love Objective-C and if I were you, I'd learn it. But Mono can be a great way to start in case you're in hurry.

 

[Fritzables]

Thanks everyone for responding to my query.

Well, it looks like XCode (with Objective-C) has it.
I have managed to find a book that deals with these together.

Under the Windows, 'C' did have some limitations thus one of the reasons I pursued C++ then C#. Is this the case with iMac??

Pete

 

[jiminaus]

Under the Windows, 'C' did have some limitations thus one of the reasons I pursued C++ then C#. Is this the case with iMac??

If you're talking about GUI programming then yes.

There is a C GUI framework on Mac OS X called Carbon. It was a bridge between traditional Mac OS and Mac OS X (these are 2 very different things, kind of like Windows 3.1 verses Windows NT, but more so). I understand lots of software still uses it. But it has effectively been deprecated by Apple ruling out upgrading it to 64-bit, so I would strongly recommend not using it for new development.

AppKit on Mac OS X and UIKit on iOS are the Objective-C GUI frameworks. It fits into those OS's in a similar place as does MFC and WPF/WinForms on Windows.