.net development on the Mac

Out of curiosity I wanted to see how one develops software for the Mac OSX, therefor I started looking at Mac development the last week and registered as an Apple developer and downloaded XCode, browsed through a bunch of tutorials and started hacking away. Fired up XCode and created a Obj-C Cocoa application, opened Interface Builder and got used to it. Hooked up actions and outlets and found the experience quite enjoyable. Interface Builder does not automagically generate the “code-behind” that I´m used to from my time as a WinForms developer, you actually have to tell it to do so explicitly (at least was far as I´ve figured out. Hopefully I´m wrong - anyone?). So far so good. I have my user interface defined and have a .H and .M file to start coding. Being an old C/C++ developer, I get comfortable with the a lot of the library (Stdio, stdlib, std*).

A couple of hours into it all I just loose interest. I am a C# and .net developer at heart and start missing my comfort-zone. Then it pops into my head; I remember something vaguely called CocoaSharp, and I know I got the option of Mono. Google it is.

Mono had an update on the 1st of August, version 2.0: http://www.mono-project.com/news/archive/2008/Aug-01.html

It supports C# 3.0 and LINQ.. Ahh.. I´m saved.

Then it´s off to download CocoaSharp and get the plugin for XCode and get all my C# goodness, .net library and LINQiness back.

Any other tips would be really appreciated - please leave me a comment.

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Update, 28th of august:

Video tutorial for how to get started can be found here. You’ll find the XCode plugin here.