Developing for IPhone with MonoTouch

I'm developing my first app for the iPhone using Mono, MonoTouch and MonoDevelop in a Mac Mini. Never used seriously a Mac before, and last time I've developed something professionally for an Apple platform was for the Apple II, back in the 1970s (yes, I'm that old...).

Anyway, it is awesome to be able to leverage my skills with Mono and C#, instead of having to resort to Objective-C, to get the job done.

So far, I'm tackling the still steep learning curve over Cocoa, Interface Builder, and the limitations imposed over Mono by the AOT compiling the iPhone platform mandates.

My app has just a Login View, so far, that already interacts and validates against a hard-coded password, and Monodevelop generates an executable with some 4.7 Megabytes to be deployed to the iPhone Simulator.

When you think that all the Mono native runtime and huge parts of the basic class library already in native binary format is in there, I think it is a reasonable size, that won't grow much until I add loads and loads of functionality to the application.

I've been using the evaluation version of Monotouch so far, but I think it is proving itself worth the price, and my boss already said the investment on buying one or two (if we buy a second mac) enterprise licenses has a green.

Now I'm going to move more code from our J2ME version of the app to C#, while also trying to build an usable interface on top of it along the Apple guidelines.

Trying to change a background image on this blog

First insert it here to upload to blogger (in truth blogspot):
I've obtained it from PatternCooler
After I save it I'll try to change the template CSS to refer to it.

PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services

Well that is an interesting crossover: Having your data served by .NET on a REST way, being easily consumed by a PHP web app.

See A new bridge for PHP developers to .NET through REST: PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services which I've found via Julie Lerman's Blog , which I've found out via Google after receiving an email from O'Reilly inviting to a free webcast with her: Entity Framework Tips & Tricks.

This is the nature of the Internet, it provides a continuous stream of connections (links) popping up every second that allow us to thread our way through many interesting subjects.

For a curious mind like mine, this is both a blessing and a curse, as it allows me to grow my knowledge and renew my stock of questions, but surely steal out lots of my time, thus playing havoc with my personal planning... :)

Carnitas Recipe

Thanks Jonathan for directing me to it (through Twitter):

http://food.rlove.org/2008/09/slow-braised-carnitas.html

Book meme

Instructions :

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

"Uma parte das matérias será predominantemente presencial e outra, predominantemente virtual"

Translation:

"A number of classes will be predominantly face-to-face and others will be predominantly virtual"

Time to port some Windows XP drivers to Vista 64

Not the project I dreamed of, but it is still nice having to learn the innards of the newest Windows versions and x64 development.

Before anything else time to upgrade the DDKBUILD script to the newest available which covers kernel-mode development for Windows Vista and 2008 Server.

http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=43

Put simply ddkbuild.cmd is a must-have for drivers' development, as it makes integration with VS2005 viable, newer versions of VS may also benefit but as I'm stuck with that version I don't know.

Sneer Summit was very nice!!!

We've discussed core technical issues like the component model abstracted around "Bricks", with some AOP-like cross-cut concerns added as "Natures". This was in Java.

Them some discussion on data-model separation. Currently it is tied to the component model, by defining POJOs that flow in-and-out the Brick mandatory public interface.

Them meta-programming, to substitute current "Nature", run-time injection of behavior with more debuggable Macros, but as that means using another language (Boo migrated to JVM as Boojay) it is not clearcut if the Sneer coders will go down this route.

After suffering some "Rock Band"-ness, I swayed to the sovereign games development session, where discussions just kept the big question unanswered, what kind of game would be a sucess in a Sovereign landscape.

Finally, we got back to the final all-voices discussions on the merits of pursuing such a project and how to make it effectively grow up. Most people feel that a killer app is needed, and that portable protocols should be defined to enable developers not to be forced to use Java or more generally just some specific language/platform to develop Sovereign pieces and apps.

I, for example, still prefer to implement my sovereign bits in C#,Boo, or probably some Mono-based DSL I'll cook in the vein of Intentional Programming or Reinvention Of Programming