Letters from Readers
Letters: Parsing the iPad
A reader responds to "iPad's Platform Impact," Andrew Brust's March, 2010, Redmond Review column on the Apple iPad.
While attending MIX10 in Las Vegas, I picked up the March issue of VSM and read Andrew Brust's column. I'm a .NET developer and have been for many years. I got my start in Visual Basic 3 and worked my way up from there. I'm also an iPhone developer and have been a fan of the Apple platform for many years, and I own an iPhone.
You make learning Objective-C and the iPhone SDK sound like a huge challenge. It's not. A good developer can pick up the language and syntax fairly quickly. I also believe that the more languages that a developer has been exposed to, the better they can be. The Objective-C language is a bit strange at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's quite nice.
I don't see [developing] for the iPhone as risky. If you can develop a good app, and understand the iPhone experience, then you have a great opportunity ahead of you.
Justin Holman
Submitted via Internet
Andrew Brust responds:
I think you make some very good points. My point was that even if developers think the iPad won't have much market momentum, it doesn't matter: They still have to take the Cocoa/Xcode/Objective-C platform more seriously now, as it now spans more mobile development opportunities than just the iPhone and iPod Touch.
This piece was a wake-up call -- both to Microsoft and .NET developers -- that ignoring the iPhone platform or refraining from developing for it is becoming increasingly difficult, and people should start thinking seriously about how to deal with the situation. I think your counterpoint that learning the new platform is not really all that hard is fair. But I still think the costs of this are real, and the fact that .NET developers may be forced to pay those costs means Microsoft, with Windows Mobile 6.5 and earlier, let its developer ecosystem down. We'll see if Windows Phone 7 can compensate, and how quickly.
Thinkin' About LINQ
Readers respond to Patrick Steele's C# Corner column on using LINQ to create cleaner, more readable code ("Using LINQ to Express Intent," March 2010).
Great article. LINQ is one of my favorite components of .NET. I'm always finding new and interesting ways to leverage it to make my code easier to read and maintain.
Steven
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I'm wondering about the performance implications here. Will using LINQ to do some of these things be less efficient? I'm not sure what's happening under the covers -- for example, when I do .Skip(1) rather than just looping starting at index 1.
Craig Fisher
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About the Author
This story was written or compiled based on feedback from the readers of Visual Studio Magazine.