.Net MAUI moves along

Oh I dont use VS Code

I use VS for macOS - their beta testing it and have been for some time

Its quite different than VS Code

I understand. I gave up on VS for macOS a year and a half ago. I hear it has improved a lot but I’m happy with Ryder on macOS although it doesn’t format line continuations to my liking quite as well as VS for Windows. It has some strengths and weaknesses relative to the latter but it is far closer to the functionality of VS for Windows than VS for macOS ever was.

I was just remarking as a side matter that whenever I’ve spun up VS Code it’s just a big “meh” although I understand the macOS and Windows versions are feature-equivalent.

I think @einhugur switches back & forth between Ryder & VS
Not sure if he uses both on Mac & windows or what

I use Rider and VS both on macOS.

Both to make sure the framework works nice on both and also to get 2nd set of eyes from the analyze tools in Rider.

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Care to share your thoughts. I noticed the windows version supports python but the Mac version doesn’t. I’m curious how that’s implemented.

@einhugur would be better to comment since I’m ONLY using VS on macOS ; which I’ve been reasonably pleased with esp the progress

It gets better each release and right now its not horrible :slight_smile:
perfect - hell no
but it gets better every time an update shows up (which has been pretty close to one every week)

I know M$FT has been investing a lot in Python. They have a goal of increasing CPython performance 5x (Guido works for them now and leads that effort). They’ve been involved since the Python 2.x days and seem quite committed to it.

now if python only had a decent ui toolkit :slight_smile:

So many fun languages and so many are command line only really since they dont have decent UI bindings

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There is not much with UI binding and what we have in Dotnet really good is windows centric. The rest: forget it for the next years until MS will get ready or again say: apps, we will move somewhere else. And exactly the could be happened. Only two with UI are C++ with WX and QT and Java with JavafX and Swing. The rest is: we try to or even html with Javascript where I can say: no Benchmark could deliver what Javascript promises. So: what can we do developing good reliable UI Software cross platform? QT and Java are the only ones except you want to land on GTK or other really hardcore looking platforms. But I am happy to know that I will find here hundreds which will say: yes this and this are the better alternatives. And I can say: no. Look what the entire industry is doing and what is real standard and not hoped base for UI dreams.

I’m going to download it and give it a spin. Honestly, I’m at an age where I’m gonna be super picky. What I really need is Xojo as described in the marketing material. My dream solution would be a Xojo using Python that worked as advertised. I got bit by python and don’t really want to use anything else if possible.

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I rather like Python as well but have been put off by its performance issues and, as you point out, the lack of decent visual designers in the toolchain.

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Yep, they know want people are looking for but are unable to deliver. It is just a marketing spin.

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On the topic of Maui, I have been catching up on some reading today. There’s another option (independent open source project) called Uno that seems to target everything Xojo does except Raspberry Pi, and can do it all from a single solution.

Based on the book I have from Apress (Getting Started with Uno Platform and Win UI 3) it looks a little messier to get going with than Xojo; the first 50 pages of the book are consumed describing the process for getting the required installs done and the example project set up. The example project targets Windows. MacOS, Linux, IOS, Android and Web (via Wasm).

Uno is different from MAUI in that it includes the web target; it’s different from Win UI in that it is “opinionated” about pixel-identical rendering on all targets at the expense of native controls (although you CAN use native controls if you want).

Uno works from Visual Studio for Windows and, to a lesser extent, Visual Studio for Mac and Ryder on the various platforms. If you really care about all the targets you’re probably best off developing on Windows using VS as it can compile and debug for all targets with the exception of debugging for macOS.

This looks like it would be something you could convince a corporate client to commit to for a cross-platform project. It is overkill for what I’m doing with Xojo (internal app targeting macOS and probably later, Linux, without fussy appearance requirements).

The biggest thing it does that Xojo doesn’t is allow a single project / solution to handle all targets with mostly shared code and very little by way of conditional compilation. But I can already tell the learning curve is much steeper, particularly if you’re not familiar with .NET and C# and Microsoft tooling.

Also, I get the impression that visual designers are more for prototyping to the extent they exist. Most devs seem to build out UIs in XAML :face_vomiting:

https://platform.uno/docs/articles/intro.html

That was for me the way I started using CodenameOne and Java. If I want to get the same UI I can use the UI for all project types. I can also write an App and building a UI for Desktop, one for Web and one for IOS/Android. I can decide what I want. Mostly I make one UI for IOS and Android and one for Desktop. With CodenameOne I can use even one for all. Hand coded UI is also for CN1 the normal way like also for Java Swing. I am not using by self visual Designers. No need for. But I love Java coded UI and prefer it when looking on the yaml and xlml experiments.

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I’ve no idea why UNO still exists. All is possible from within Maui now.

Is there a web target within a single project in Maui?

The other reason Uno exists is to extend Win UI to the other platforms and to favor precisely the same result in each platform over native controls.

Is there a reason for it to exist? Probably less than there was.

Between Xamarin Forms, Win UI, Uno, Maui – it’s like MSFT and the .NET community (in the case of Uno – but really a vendor with a particular need that got the ball rolling) rolled the dice 4 times and now I suppose Maui is what MSFT will favor, at least until they change their minds again, lol. All this churn plus the transition from ASP. NET MVC 5 to MVC Core plus Blazor. It can be pretty hard to figure out what to invest in because even if you pick the winning horse it may be sent to the glue factory in 5 year’s time.

Indeed 5 years is probably the most you can hope for these days. Anything with a lifetime longer than that and you have the Hobson’s choice of sticking with a fading legacy platform or rewriting it for the latest fad. I much preferred the cadence of the 90s and even the 2000’s when you could probably count on a full decade before everyone decides the platform you use is old and lousy rather than new and improved.

I tried Uno about a year ago and found it really slow; I was using a Windows PC, i5 (6th gen) with 20GB RAM and an SSD. Same machine ran Xojo ok.
Has anyone tried it more recently?
I liked the idea of single project but the slowness really put me off.

There is also AvaloniaUI…

https://avaloniaui.net/

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Thanks, I was not aware of that. “Spiritual successor to WPF” + “Familiar development experience” suggests it’s oriented to visual designers. Also like the Ryder integration since it’s my tool of choice. I will definitely check it out.

Consider investigating old school platforms. Thorsten loves Java. I love PHP.

They’ve been around forever. :slight_smile: