Okay - managed to make a simple UI Xamarin Forms script.. label, button with a single click event. It wasn't hideous to make and it did work. I don't know Xamarin Forms all that well, but for prototyping this could be very nice. The IDE isn't quite there as I found more often that not, the pop up hints and help are obscured by the keyboard on my iPhone 6. I'm sure on an iPad this is much slicker.
Here's a big issue though - if I develop some "cool app", how do I then transfer it to a desktop for compilation and distribution? That seems like it should be an option, but I haven't found the magic mechanism yet.
Re:Professional C# and F# IDE for the iPad
by praeclarum on Thursday July 07, 2016 @01:15PM
(#12050716)
If you develop a cool app and want to distribute it on the App Store, then you will indeed have to transfer it to a Mac and recompile it there using Xamarin's free product. This is a mix of limitations of Continuous (doesn't have an ARM compiler included) plus a limitation of Apple (you need a Mac per their rules).
What is the best way to file bug reports?
In the sketch demo I'm getting "TargetException Non-static method requites a target" when I click the "share" button.
Re:Professional C# and F# IDE for the iPad
by melling on Thursday July 07, 2016 @06:19AM
(#12048464)
How's the F# IDE? Learning F# is on my shortlist.
LINQPad is really nice for this. You get intellisense and an integrated debugger if you pony up for the license.
Re:Professional C# and F# IDE for the iPad
by praeclarum on Thursday July 07, 2016 @01:17PM
(#12050727)
I worked hard to make sure F# got equal support to C# - semantic highlighting, code completion, all that. The only real difference is the F# builds are a bit slower than C#.
I don't do F#, so I'm not qualified to comment.
Re:Professional C# and F# IDE for the iPad
by davidgrenier on Thursday July 07, 2016 @08:31AM
(#12048875)
Learn it in a week: http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/
Make a comment.
So - verdict? Here is the one minute review:
Pro: The app does what it says. The code completion is there, the suggestions are sound. Creating apps is pretty simple, though you can also create scripts. It isn't doing anything funky - it is just straight up C#. The extra characters given above the keyboard are sufficient. Nothing overly bad is grabbing me outside of my Cons below. I feel like it was a sound purchase, and I'm happy to support the developer!
Con: On the iPhone the screen layout is getting in the way a little. The code completion window was hidden under the keyboard when I tried to do something less trivial than a simple script. Writing the most basic console app failed with a NullReferenceException:
... var r = Console.ReadLine(); Console.WriteLine(r); ...
It seems like the console isn't 2 way? This even works in LinqPad, so I'm not going insane - it's valid code.
Overall, I think it is a neat little tool. Fairly polished, but it needs to be tweaked over the next few months to improve some of the features.