C#/.NET

The Most 'Agile' Development Platform?

In the ongoing search for the perfect application development environment, C#/.NET may be closer to realizing the ideal than anything else to date.

The key to agility is quick coding and quick refactoring ability. C# facilitates this in many ways, but primarily through the elimination of separate declarative headers (akin to java's 'import' mechanism), and extremely fast build times.

Working in the IDE is a sheer joy, with code completion features that keep you from endlessly looking up references. The IDE literally guides you along.

And, C# is no dog, performance-wise. It doesn't eat up all of the machine's resources (like java). The JIT compilation is very smart and produces native code. Further developments in optimizations - including global optimizations - are ongoing.

A Cross Platform Solution?

Exciting news is that an open-source initiative - mono - is underway to bring C# development to the cross-platform world. Open source is sometimes "iffy" depending on who the players are - in this case, software giant Novell has thrown its hat in the ring in a very big way, determined to make it the application development language of choice on the Linux platform. Naturally, this will have great benefit across all platforms, as it gets implemented across the board.

Of course, C# is pretty incomplete without an IDE. In the mono environment this is provided with a tool called mono-develop. It has essentially the same code-completion/hints features as the MSDN IDE correspondent on Windows.

As if this weren't enough good news, already - right on the heels of mono is another open-source project to bring the Qt framework under C#, (qyoto). The project is proceding at a slower pace, and performance is not up to par with other C# technologies (.NET, gtk+), but it's usable and promising, and the licensing issues are clearer.

We're excited about this new technology, and are anxiously looking for clients that are willing to step up to the next generation of application development. There will likely be bumps, but it could work very well into your product life-cycle plans.

More Information

KIS Systems has gained deep experience in the C#/.NET application development arena. We are also actively investigating the mono and qyoto projects as a promising framework for future development. For projects large or small, contact us to see how we can help you achieve your goals.