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C# vs NativeScript: What are the differences?
What is C#? Simple, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language for the .NET platform. C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.
What is NativeScript? Build truly native apps with JavaScript. NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.
C# belongs to "Languages" category of the tech stack, while NativeScript can be primarily classified under "Cross-Platform Mobile Development".
"Cool syntax" is the primary reason why developers consider C# over the competitors, whereas "Access to the entire native api" was stated as the key factor in picking NativeScript.
NativeScript is an open source tool with 17.1K GitHub stars and 1.26K GitHub forks. Here's a link to NativeScript's open source repository on GitHub.
Intuit, Stack Exchange, and OpenTable are some of the popular companies that use C#, whereas NativeScript is used by Work Box, Zege Technologies, and GeekyAnts. C# has a broader approval, being mentioned in 684 company stacks & 1119 developers stacks; compared to NativeScript, which is listed in 10 company stacks and 23 developer stacks.
In 2015 as Xelex Digital was paving a new technology path, moving from ASP.NET web services and web applications, we knew that we wanted to move to a more modular decoupled base of applications centered around REST APIs.
To that end we spent several months studying API design patterns and decided to use our own adaptation of CRUD, specifically a SCRUD pattern that elevates query params to a more central role via the Search action.
Once we nailed down the API design pattern it was time to decide what language(s) our new APIs would be built upon. Our team has always been driven by the right tool for the job rather than what we know best. That said, in balancing practicality we chose to focus on 3 options that our team had deep experience with and knew the pros and cons of.
For us it came down to C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. At the time we owned our infrastructure, racks in cages, that were all loaded with Windows. We were also at a point that we were using that infrastructure to it's fullest and could not afford additional servers running Linux. That's a long way of saying we decided against Ruby as it doesn't play nice on Windows.
That left us with two options. We went a very unconventional route for deciding between the two. We built MVP APIs on both. The interfaces were identical and interchangeable. What we found was easily quantifiable differences.
We were able to iterate on our Node based APIs much more rapidly than we were our C# APIs. For us this was owed to the community coupled with the extremely dynamic nature of JS. There were tradeoffs we considered, latency was (acceptably) higher on requests to our Node APIs. No strong types to protect us from ourselves, but we've rarely found that to be an issue.
As such we decided to commit resources to our Node APIs and push it out as the core brain of our new system. We haven't looked back since. It has consistently met our needs, scaling with us, getting better with time as continually pour into and expand our capabilities.
C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.
Pros of C#
- Cool syntax351
- Great lambda support293
- Great generics support266
- Language integrated query (linq)211
- Extension methods180
- Automatic garbage collection94
- Properties with get/set methods89
- Backed by microsoft84
- Automatic memory management71
- Amaizing Crossplatform Support61
- High performance46
- LINQ43
- Beautiful38
- Great ecosystem of community packages with Nuget35
- Vibrant developer community27
- Great readability24
- Dead-simple asynchronous programming with async/await21
- Visual Studio - Great IDE19
- Open source17
- Productive16
- Strongly typed by default, dynamic typing when needed15
- Object oriented programming paradigm15
- Easy separation of config/application code12
- Great community11
- OOPS simplified with great syntax10
- Operator overloading9
- Cool9
- Good language to teach OO concepts8
- High-performance8
- Events management using delegates8
- Unity7
- Linq expressions7
- Conditional compilation6
- Coherent language backed by an extensive CLR6
- Top level code5
- Organized and clean5
- Comprehensive platform libraries5
- Concise syntax, productivity designed4
- Lovely3
- Statically typed2
- Far more sleek and sphisticated than other languages1
- Simple and Readable1
- Sophisticated overall1
- Interfaces1
- Interfaces0
Pros of NativeScript
- Access to the entire native api75
- Support for native ios and android libraries47
- Support for javascript libraries46
- Angular 2.0 support46
- Native ux and performance44
- Typescript support37
- Backed up by google and telerik35
- Css support29
- Cross-platform declarative ui and code27
- Fully open source under apache 2.0 license25
- Vuejs support11
- 60fps performance9
- Powerful data visualization with native UI6
- VS Code integration5
- Angular, typescript and javascript support5
- No need for Mac to build iOS apps in Telerik Platform5
- Extended CLI support4
- Cloud builds as part of Telerik PLatform4
- Truly Object-Oriented with Typescript4
- On-device debugging4
- Extensibility4
- Access to entire native api3
- Live reload3
- Easiest of all other frameworks3
- Easy to learn3
- Backed by google3
- 0 day support for new OS updates3
- Publishing modules to NPM3
- Vue.js support out of the box2
- VueJS support2
- Svelte support2
- Powerfull mobile services as part of Telerik Platform2
- Native ui with angular2
- Vue support2
- Playground1
- Hot Reload1
- HMR via webpack1
- Very small app size1
- Write once, use anywhere1
- Easy to use, support for almost all npm packages1
- Rich ecosystem1
- Compile to Apple/Google Stores via CloudCompiler1
- Has CSS ;-)1
- It works with Angular1
- Code reuse with your website1
- Dart0
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Cons of C#
- Poor x-platform GUI support15
- Closed source8
- Fast and secure7
- Requires DllImportAttribute for getting stuff from unma7
Cons of NativeScript
- Lack of promotion5
- Slower Performance compared to competitors1