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I know I'm not the first and probably many people ask similar questions here regularly and this question probably another candidate for closing votes. I'm not trying to start another round of endless holywars and I'm not asking which language is better. It's not the question of "one vs. another" series. But I need your opinion.

My company recently assigned me for mobile development for iOS. Although my first and favorite language is c# I don't mind to learn new languages. And apparently I don't have problems with Objective-C. Sure, some constructs don't look very readable for my eye right now, but after a week I don't feel that the language itself is very horrible comparing to c#.
And at the very beginning I decided first to learn what's the people's opinion, and there I read: How to decide between MonoTouch and Objective-C? and also here: MonoTouch & C# VS Objective C for iphone app

And of course my first choice was to use Monotouch. I got a book, I downloaded a tutorial. But then I realized that one way or another I'm gonna need to learn native iOS SDK essentials, and if after sometime I'm gonna need to go deeper I'm gonna need to study samples that written rather in objective-c.

  • I know MonoTouch is much better now than even half a year ago, and Miguel and his crew improving it and everyday it's just getting better. The pay for such product absolutely fair and reasonable. I don't mind spending $400 for the licence.

  • I understand that the real problem is not in objective-c but in foundation and CocoaTouch libraries, which will take some time to learn.

  • As I understood, some stuff is really difficult to play through native libraries such as XML handling, REST calls and probably some other stuff and MonoTouch could be very handy here

  • It's not like the older days when people were afraid that Apple would reject their apps written in MonoDevelop. Quite a big amount of apps made in MD out there in AppStore today. Sure Apple is unpredictable but it's unlikely that they start removing apps anytime soon. And even then I believe Miguel and his team will come out with solution.

So, my curiosity is: how many people after using MonoTouch for sometime switched back (or considering switching back) to Objective-C and Xcode from MonoTouch? And why? What could be the reason? Is there something that could force somebody to redesign an app created in MD and rewrite it using Xcode and Objective-C?

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iLemming
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  • You're right: this question doesn't belong here. Try http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ – N_A Sep 27 '11 at 18:59
  • Why do you think it doesn't belong here? I think if I posted it there they would probably transfer it here... – iLemming Sep 27 '11 at 19:17
  • You are asking for opinion and anecdotal experience, and inviting discussion - there is no response that anyone could give you that could conceivably be considered the "correct" answer. – Jason Sep 27 '11 at 19:28
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    Maybe it doesn't belong there either. Your question is oriented towards getting a lot of answers where none of them is the "right" answer. Maybe you should change your question to something simpler such as "What things are difficult or impossible to do in MonoTouch that can more easily be done in objective-c?" Also, your question has a lot of stuff that just make it less readable. Consider some serious pruning... – N_A Sep 27 '11 at 19:35

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