Language/Framework choice for Windows Mobile app
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Hello everyone, I have been working on an application prototype for couple of months now. The app is used frequently by the user throught the day and make extensive use of GPS for location aware functionality and communicates with server over GPRS/3G. It runs on Windows Mobile at present. We may eventualy want to use as much source code as possible to develop a version of this app for other mobile devices say Netbook/Notebook with a 3G card etc (this way we can re-use business logic and have different UI layer written which is specific to the device). The chosen development language so far has been C++ - MFC because we have been biased towards using C++ for performance reason. I have explored couple of cases to see what suits best for our app development moving forward - C#/.NET compact framework or - MFC or - a Web application may be using Silverlight Each have a positive and negative point for ex - MFC apps will have small memory footprint considering limited virtual memory on Window Mobile OS but development effort and complexity increases and it is not future proof. C# on the other hand is the choice moving forward because I believe MS will be want .NET CF and many .NET based technologies like Silverlight on Windows Mobile platform, Also you can run .NET CF applications on Desktop most of the time etc etc My question is - do you know of any case where you made a decision of language and environment for similar application? do you have any advice based on your experiences so far on Windows Mobile development.
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Hello everyone, I have been working on an application prototype for couple of months now. The app is used frequently by the user throught the day and make extensive use of GPS for location aware functionality and communicates with server over GPRS/3G. It runs on Windows Mobile at present. We may eventualy want to use as much source code as possible to develop a version of this app for other mobile devices say Netbook/Notebook with a 3G card etc (this way we can re-use business logic and have different UI layer written which is specific to the device). The chosen development language so far has been C++ - MFC because we have been biased towards using C++ for performance reason. I have explored couple of cases to see what suits best for our app development moving forward - C#/.NET compact framework or - MFC or - a Web application may be using Silverlight Each have a positive and negative point for ex - MFC apps will have small memory footprint considering limited virtual memory on Window Mobile OS but development effort and complexity increases and it is not future proof. C# on the other hand is the choice moving forward because I believe MS will be want .NET CF and many .NET based technologies like Silverlight on Windows Mobile platform, Also you can run .NET CF applications on Desktop most of the time etc etc My question is - do you know of any case where you made a decision of language and environment for similar application? do you have any advice based on your experiences so far on Windows Mobile development.
I'm biased towards C# for most applications because it is a rapid development language. The amount of effort taken to do most general task is highly reduced by the language facilities. Of course depending on how low level the functionality is that you use you may have to make extensive use of P/Invoking.
Joel Ivory Johnson
Meet my dev team: RDA Architecture Evangelist Team Blog
My site: J2i.net
Twitter: J2iNet
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I'm biased towards C# for most applications because it is a rapid development language. The amount of effort taken to do most general task is highly reduced by the language facilities. Of course depending on how low level the functionality is that you use you may have to make extensive use of P/Invoking.
Joel Ivory Johnson
Meet my dev team: RDA Architecture Evangelist Team Blog
My site: J2i.net
Twitter: J2iNet
Thank you Joel. I work with C# and see the benefits but I need to find some case where it will really turn the decision in favor of managed code using .NET CF. I have a few cases with me but would like to see CPians view before finalizing (I have not made the decision yet and the views I read here will impact that) On few forums I read posts which advice not to use managed code on Winmo because of performance, battery, and memory foot print issues with any code that requires runtime on mobile devices. What are your views on this?