Is Mono for OS X any good for a professional .NET developer?

Question

As a professional .net developer (at least this is how I earn my money) I wonder if Mono for the Mac is worth a closer look. I already tried Mono 3 years ago when I first got my iMac but the installation was impossible to master and after half a day I just gave up. I also got help from a Unix professional but we both were unable to get Mono running on my Mac.

Like I said that was some years ago. How is the state of Mono for OS X today? Installation still painful? How about compatibility to .NET Framework 2.0?

Answer 1

Today Mono is quite mature in terms of performance and stability. The current version, Mono 2.4, has a full implementation of .NET 2.0 including ASP.NET. This also supports C# 3.0 and almost all APIs of .NET 3.5, and yes, it supports ASP.NET MVC as well. My experience with my Mac and Mono is very positive, including for development environment. I prefer to use Textmate + Compiler but there is a good IDE out there: MonoDevelop.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

It's very easy to set it up. It's much more mature than it was 3 years ago but you should still consider libraries that have problems with Mono. I mean, you should test apps rather than blindly assuming its compatible with Mono.

From a developer perspective, MonoDevelop hardly competes even with a half of Visual Studio Express.