Comment by joshuapants
11 years ago
> For XCode, compare it to Visual Studio (IMO, VS is light years ahead)
I agree. VS is the best IDE I've ever used by far.
> For Mac Native, compare to the .NET runtime (IMO .NET is better but it's not as clear cut)
The only thing I wish is that MS made it a bit easier to make .NET transparent for the user. Occasionally you need to install a version of the runtime when you install a new program, it'd be nice if that was all "built-in" and taken care of instead of adding another step to the installation.
Strangely enough, the reason that this install step exists is because the .NET Framework _is_ built-in to Windows. For example, .NET 3.5 was built-in to Windows 7. If your app needed .NET 4, then it needed to formally install it on the system. If we didn't make that an option, then .NET 4 apps would not run on Windows 7, which would be bad.
.NET Core is _not_ built-in to the OS, so apps can carry it within their package, meaning that there is never a need to add another step to the installation. This is a major goal of .NET Core.
Ah thanks for clarifying. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of just always grabbing the most recent .NET through Windows Update automatically.
Makes sense. There is a latency of when .NET Framework versions are released and when they show up on Windows Update. Also, customer do not have to install them even when they do show up. Also, some versions don't show up on Windows Update for various reasons. That's why the install step exists.