Re:Some thoughts after (almost) a year of real Xamarin use
by omegavesko on Saturday April 04, 2015 @03:38PM
(#9321916)
>Unfortunately, the built-in IDE for Unity is MonoDevelop, which has all the problems Xamarin does, You don't have to use Mono though, you can use any editor.
In fact, Visual Studio has first-class support for Unity now, since MS bought the company that made UnityVS and released it as a free VS extension.
I really don't think I could recommend using Unity for a non-game app, though, at least in most cases. It would be a subpar experience for both the developer and the user.
Re:Some thoughts after (almost) a year of real Xamarin use
by alok-g on Saturday April 04, 2015 @02:18PM
(#9321654)
How useful is it to develop non-gaming applications (including 2D UIs)? And how much overheads it results in in terms of application performance and size? Thanks.
Re:Some thoughts after (almost) a year of real Xamarin use
by strangecasts on Saturday April 04, 2015 @03:02PM
(#9321811)
Not very: it fundamentally assumes you're making a game, so it draws 3D scenes and uses a continuous update loop, which taxes the battery on mobile devices. The UI tools are also just finicky enough to make non-game app development a pain.
In addition, it does have a little size overhead - the smallest possible build on iOS (a blank screen) is 12 MB with all the optimizations on, and double that if you need to invoke System functions or libraries that need them.
Re:Some thoughts after (almost) a year of real Xamarin use
by dangero on Saturday April 04, 2015 @04:20PM
(#9322060)
Have you actually seen a performance comparison when idle? I ask because I have been curious about trying to build a full application inside Unity.
Update() on Unity doesn't strike me as being all that different than a normal GUI app's message loop.
Unfortunately, the built-in IDE for Unity is MonoDevelop, which has all the problems Xamarin does, You don't have to use Mono though, you can use any editor.