I've been looking at iPhone and Android development for the past couple of months. Just the other day I received a review copy of the book "Android Wireless Application Development" and wished I didn't have to write in Java (not my favorite programming language) to develop for Android. Similarly, I've been looking at Objective C for the iPhone and wished I could write in something more familiar like C++, Python, or Ruby. InfoWorld reports that I'm sort-of-kind-of getting my iPhone wish this week...

iPhone gets .Net app development

Novell is providing its Mono Project runtime for the iPhone. Mono is an Open Source project that provides compatibility for Microsoft's .NET Framework architecture for platforms like the Linux operating system. MonoTouch (Mono for the iPhone and iPod touch) will let developers use the C# (C "Sharp") programming language and the Microsoft .NET Framework to write software for the iPhone and iPod touch. Its main purpose is to provide a tool for cross-platform development.

But, I'm concerned that it may introduce an influx of large bloated sluggish applications to the already gigantic iPhone app marketplace. This is, I should note, in spite of InfoWorld noting that MonoTouch lets developers access native iPhone APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and cross-compilers that turns .Net executable files into native iPhone apps. I just can't imagine that two or more layers of abstraction will produce small tight code.