With the intention of getting some casual development done on the MBA I set forth to install the needed tools. As i’m mainly a C# .net sort of developer so i set about installing the latest mono release 2.10 which includes an impressive array of bundled tools (C#, F#, IronPython & IronRuby). MonoDevelop was then next on the list.
Getting a small amount of C# development done on the MBA was simply easy compared with the HP Mini i’ve used in the past. Reinforcing my initial impression of the keyboard typing code and accessing the full range of symbols was just as easy as the MacBook Pro.
First up using mono-develop. This was a joy, the IDE’s UI easily gets out of the way by default so the most of the 11” screen is available for the code window. This really took me by surprise coming from Visual Studio with its abundance of sidebars and docked windows, anything less than 1920x1200 is a pain. It was refreshing.
The loading time for mono develop and the responsiveness are comparable if not better given the ssd than the main development machine.
Getting on with it, couchdbx in installed and ready for use. I look forward to many comfortable hours of development on this machine.
So the details: 38 lines of readable code on screen with 150 characters with a small sidebar allows for about 15 characters of each file in a project using the default settings in mono develop.
