
Xamarin now free in Visual Studio, and Xamarin SDK being open-sourced - ingve
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/xamarin-now-free-in-visual-studio/
======
natfriedman
We've also re-released Mono under the MIT license: [http://www.mono-
project.com/news/2016/03/31/mono-relicensed-...](http://www.mono-
project.com/news/2016/03/31/mono-relicensed-mit/)

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Looks like MS made a decision to make Windows as attractive to developers as
possible.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I've said this before and I'm sure others have noticed. Microsoft's focus is
'developers developers developers' whether it's for Visual Studio, or Azure
Cloud, if you want software built for your platform you should cater to
developers. I also said if I were JetBrains I'd worry about Microsoft's new
agenda, they're going to have to take on Microsoft's new route. If Visual
Studio itself (not Code) becomes cross-platform in the future that would be a
huge blow for IntelliJ and other IDE's that JetBrains makes, maybe not at
first but eventually. From my own experience Python Tools for Visual Studio
and PyCharm are two of the best IDE's I've ever had the pleasure of using for
Python, if that level of detail went into other IDE's that would be fantastic.
Not to down other work others have done.

~~~
devsquid
Yea, I agree that the IntelliJ IDEA and VS (not code) are the two best IDEs
out there.

The three major factors I would rank the IDEA over VS.

1\. Extensibility, its more likely to support X language

2\. Crossplatform, it actually runs on my platform

3\. Its UI doesn't change drastically every few years. This is such an
underrated thing IMO. Neither VS or IDEA are pretty IDEs, they both are
actually butt ugly. They don't need to be. But VS goes thru so many visual
changes and reorganizations, its the same reason why I don't use Office. I'm
not sure many ppl view this as a bad thing however. I often find MS fans
loving to brag about how "modern" their software always looks, even if it
still looks just as shitty as the old one lol.

~~~
usrusr
#3 must be the most underrated software feature ever. Too bad that it is at
odds with the model of making money by selling new software revisions. Maybe
the slow move to paid subscriptions will spare us the hassle of re-learning
UIs for no good reason when we are old and grey :)

(How much would i pay for a carefully maintained subscription of Office 97?
Well, not that much, but that is more than i paid for office software since)

~~~
toyg
It's at odds with employees' own agendas as well -- nobody gets promoted for
fixing a few bugs. Rearranging buttons, _that_ is something your manager will
notice.

~~~
newjersey
I don't understand this hostility. Some change in design is OK. Nobody knows
the future so when major new features get introduced or excised, some
reorganization makes sense. The "What would you like to do?" In Microsoft
office is a simple little textbox that adds a lot of value for casual users
I'd say enough to warrant them paying $5 a month for an Office subscription.

The ribbon makes it seem easy to surface features that would otherwise be
hidden deep in menus and sub menus.

Of course, UI design is difficult just as doing any work for consumption by
others is difficult _especially when there is no complete spec_. I am not a UI
designer but even I can make a UI that I will think is good enough. However,
making a UI for others is tough.

Maybe it is just my luck but project managers or owners have always been
hesitant to support UI changes. Maybe I've just been lucky to have good
managers but I can't recall a single time I've had to make a UI change that
wasn't driven by what I thought was a valid business need.

Also maybe why I'm not employed now :P

------
j_s
Coincidentally: PacktPub, HN-famous for 'quantity over quality'¹, is offering
the e-book _iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook_ (4+ stars @ 10 reviews²) as
their daily free e-book for 5.5 more hours.

[https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-
learning](https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning)

¹
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933716)

² [http://amzn.com/B00KJX443C](http://amzn.com/B00KJX443C)

~~~
victorantos
Thank you! To download the book you have to register first.

Or you could take it directly from here if you are one of my HN friends, this
is a temporary link
[http://victorantos.com/IOS_DEVELOPMENT_WITH_XAMARIN_COOKBOOK...](http://victorantos.com/IOS_DEVELOPMENT_WITH_XAMARIN_COOKBOOK.pdf)

~~~
frsandstone
Bad form

------
natfriedman
Thanks for the kudos everyone! This is a very exciting day for those of us who
have been working on Mono and Xamarin for many years.

We have some more details on our blog: [https://blog.xamarin.com/xamarin-for-
all/](https://blog.xamarin.com/xamarin-for-all/)

------
networked
Some analysis:

\- Having an open source alternative like this will be a blow to
Phonegap's/Apache Cordova's use for new apps.

\- The change in Mono's licensing means Unity may finally upgrade to a newer
version of Mono.

\- Let's not forget Microsoft now owns RoboVM. I wonder what this event
implies for it.

~~~
alexc05
I'm leading a small team in building an ionic app right now.

The edge that cordova/phonegap/ionic will retain is the HTML and CSS part. As
well as, at least for a little while, a more robust plugin ecosystem. Though
that second one will change VERY rapidly.

The other developers on my team are very much frontend & CSS types.

I would be too much of a bottleneck if I were the only developer able to write
the code for the app.

If xamarin were free when I started, I may have given it more time in
evaluation, but at the end of the day, I think that the choice would have
remained ionic.

Even react-native isn't ready yet if you're a windows based shop. But maybe
that's come along in the last couple months too.

~~~
hydromet
> Even react-native isn't ready yet if you're a windows based shop.

Don't forget, Facebook's annual developer conference F8 is coming up next
(April 12th 2016). They will surely have some new announcements in a few
weeks.

~~~
alexc05
True! And as I realized in another thread... Having an Ubuntu space on Windows
actually makes "native" react-native totally plausible.

------
yoodenvranx
Can somebody please explain to me why Microsoft is suddenly being so open? Are
they afraid to lose relevancy due to Linux/OSX/Android and this is their way
to fight back? What is the long-term strategy behind all of this?

edit: Thank you for all your answers!

~~~
judah
Software-wise: The open source advocates (Scott Hanselman, Scott Guthrie,
Damien Edwards, and many others) won the internal struggle. Microsoft is more
open because they recognize this is a superior model over the proprietary
closed systems they had built in the past.

Business-wise: The answer is Azure. While Microsoft wants you to run Windows,
they care even more that you're running in their cloud.

~~~
justinclift
Will they Open Source the windows spyware... er... "metrics collection" code?

~~~
justinclift
Guess by the downvoting that there's a reason people feel the "metrics
collection" shouldn't be Open Sourced?

I'd like to hear what that is, as it seems (to me) to be a stellar example of
what really should be.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Guess by the downvoting that there's a reason people feel the "metrics
> collection" shouldn't be Open Sourced?

It was a childish and immature comment, not appropriate for HN. That's why it
is getting downvoted. In addition, this comment talking about the downvotes
will get downvoted as well. Not only for the fact that you are talking about
downvotes in your comment, but by the fact that your comment is effectively
"begging the question."

Rather than make one-off snide comments, actually contribute something that is
respectful to other people's time.

~~~
justinclift
What's a better way to point out MS should be Open Sourcing the parts of their
codebase which people don't trust (eg their spyware)?

They seem to be making large numbers of moves trying to get people to use
their platform... and at the same time, shooting themselves in the foot-head-
foot with trust-destroying moves... and ignoring everything in relation to
that. :(

~~~
vulpino
How about:

"Maybe Microsoft should consider open sourcing the components of their system
which track users. It's possible that this would help rebuild the trust that
was eroded with the release of Windows 10."

~~~
justinclift
Thanks. Tried to change it... but the "edit" link was gone by that time. Oh
well, next time. :)

------
api
Wow. Very, very nice!

If anyone from MS is listening:

All you need to do to potentially convert me from a Mac user is to address
some of the privacy/security and "user exploitation" concerns around Windows
10.

When I heard that Windows 10 would serve ads to users, just hearing that
blacklisted it for me. Anything that serves ads is a low-end bargain-basement
crap product, period. You are pegging your entire ecosystem as discount bin
trash with those moves. I don't mind paying for good stuff, but I won't even
use that kind of crap for free. Apple would never serve me ads on my login
screen.

I'm also very concerned about the total lack of user control over telemetry
and phone-home features in Windows. Mac also has this problem, but less. You
could leapfrog Mac by making this stuff visible and configurable to the user
in an easy way via some kind of control panel. There is an opportunity to do
better than Apple here.

It's not that I would turn it all off. I'm not a total paranoid in that
respect. But I want to see what it is, what it is doing, and have the
_ability_ to control my privacy/security "envelope." Obviously if I am doing
anything security critical like... oh... I dunno... _developing software_ to
be distributed to millions of endpoint devices... then I care a lot about
security. Security is not just for huge "enterprise" customers.

(Privacy equals security equals privacy, since privacy invasion exposes
information that can be used to violate security.)

Honestly, the fact of the matter is that Microsoft has a significantly weaker
reputation for security and privacy than Apple. That makes me _more_ concerned
about MS software phoning home than Apple software. This is a major problem
and you have to do something about it, and in the 21st century that means
_actually fixing the problem_ rather than relying on PR to con people into
thinking you've fixed the problem.

The sorts of power users you are trying to convert with all this dev outreach
stuff are not morons and they will see through any shallow commitment to
security or privacy instantly. Pure PR plays in these areas will make you look
worse, not better.

That is all.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Same situation for me. I like everything about the way Microsoft is currently
going except in terms of privacy, and it's a massive dealbrealer. Windows 10
has a lot of strengths but I'll never willingly use it until the privacy
controls allow for all the 'phone home' features to be turned off. I just hope
either Microsoft sorts it out before Windows 7 is no longer supported or an
open source platform is polished enough to take its place.

~~~
api
It's enough to give me the impression that MS and other tech companies
(Google, Apple, Facebook) are leveraging superiority in certain areas (with
_user experience_ and UI being chief among these) to try to ram privacy
invasions and other very undesirable features down the market's throat.

Why? Some suspect a government push behind the scenes, but personally I think
the answer is simpler and more economic: that data is extremely valuable to
advertisers and advertisers are willing to pay a _lot_ for ultra-fine-grained
targeting services. Sure governments can piggy-back on all this to implement
panopticon type surveillance, but the primary driver is demand for user data
in the private sector.

The new business model of the tech industry is: give away free stuff and use
it to productize the user. Maybe MS is extending this model to developers.
(Facebook too with things like wit.ai.)

OSS can't compete. The problem with the OSS ecosystem is this: a product that
works is only 10% done. The other 90% is making it work well and making it
easy to use. It's not done until I can use it in minutes, not hours or days,
and that takes a _lot_ of painful work.

An example hit home for me today:

Today I was evaluating Microsoft LUIS and wit.ai and I realized that for
simpler use cases a lot of what they do could be done with OSS like the
Stanford Parser. The problem is that to make those work I'd spend at least a
few days just getting that ball of twine up and running, let alone figuring
out how to represent my app's intents and entities and such and actually get
to something useful. But with LUIS or wit.ai I can do it in minutes to hours
and have a ready to go app.

It's incredible. I can get natural language command and control in _minutes!_.
The catch? Facebook or Microsoft get to mine every single bit of data I send
and get a strong degree of lock-in.

There are OSS alternatives but they'd take days, weeks, or months to
integrate... therefore they do not exist.

~~~
ZenoArrow
With regards to Microsoft's business model when it comes to Windows, you could
be right about the advertising angle, but I believe some people would pay a
premium to not have the advertising in their OS. If Microsoft offered the
enterprise version of Windows 10 to the general public at a premium price then
at least individuals who cared about privacy would have a valid upgrade
option.

------
evo_9
What's the plan regarding better documentation? That's the number one reason
I've lost interest in Xamarin. Outwardly, esp. coming from a C# background, it
seems awesome. Then you try to build something other than a todo list and you
quickly find out how lacking the docs are. You might find a decent sample for
Android, but then nothing for iOS, or vice verse. Forget about OS-X
development, the docs are even worse when you get outside of iOS/Android.

I would reconsider Xamarin if the docs improved greatly. Maybe with MS
involvement this will finally happen?

MS at this point would be better served by integrating React and React-Native
in Visual Studio 2015 and Community. I know they recently came out with
support for VS Code, but that's a different beast if you are a traditional
C#/.Net/VS guy. From my experience with both, React is a pleasure to use,
while Xamarin often had me cursing my decision to use the platform.

~~~
cubano
What I've found lately is that almost all the docs and examples for the
various "hybrid" mobile platforms are out-of-date or flat-out don't work.

My guess it's just that things are moving so damn fast in that space that it's
impossible to keep up with the churn.

~~~
vibrato
I agree with you about the documentation not being very useful, but Xamarin
isn't what's usually referred to as "hybrid". It's fully native code, no
webviews needed.

~~~
cubano
So with that logic, Telerik's Nativescript can be called "fully native code"
as well? Or Appcelerator's Titanium?

Sorry I just don't see it like that.

------
douche
Fantastic. Xamarin was very slick, but the licensing costs to actually be able
to use it was pretty hefty

------
ditados
Went ahead and downloaded Xamarin Studio for the Mac. Still has an "Enterprise
Trial" button, and apparently I still have to login to activate it.

It annoys me to no end that I have to log in to Visual Studio as well (even
Community) for it to even open a project, and I wish both Microsoft and
Xamarin were more respectful of our privacy.

~~~
andysinclair
They're providing brilliant developer tools for _free_ and all they are asking
for is an email address- give them a break.

~~~
blub
It's not about a crummy e-mail address, it's about privacy, trust and freedom,
things which you get by default with libre software tools and things which
Microsoft has not proven that they can deliver.

And that software is not really free, it comes with a nice lock-in in the form
of .NET and C#, two technologies under Microsoft's control. After MS has a
track record of at least ten years of doing this open source stuff they will
get a break.

This thread is proof that for many getting stuff for free is enough to forget
a long corporate history and throw their caution to the wind.

~~~
knocte
I agree with you. That's why I prefer to use Xamarin Studio than Visual
Studio.

------
billpg
I could feel inclined to take up iOS/Android app development if I could use
Visual Studio. Last time I considered moving into mobile development, I had a
"life is too short" reaction.

Why would I still need an OS X machine for iOS development though? If MS could
eliminate whatever that last link in the chain is, I'd have to give going into
mobile development some serious reconsideration.

~~~
ickler
Apple still sells hardware. Their TOS require it be compiled on their
hardware.

~~~
VikingCoder
Ughh....

They are THE WORST. Why do people support Apple?

Remember when they said everything had to be written in Objective-C?

Gah.

------
abdelhadikhiati
Microsoft being amazing again, what a time to be alive, I can't wait to see
other things that MSFT will do in the future .

------
edandersen
They finally did it. Thank you! Literally just got approval to buy Xamarin
licenses at work which was a hard sell - now we get to go and deliver the good
news that it will be free after all.

Words cannot express how big this is for the .NET community.

------
llomlup
This is cool. They updated the pricing page:
[https://store.xamarin.com/](https://store.xamarin.com/). Hint, it's free.

~~~
mwcampbell
Strange that the section about Visual Studio Professional says "contact us for
a quote". Can't you just purchase that from the Microsoft online store?

~~~
addicted
I think VS Professional has been discontinued. The contact us for a quote is
probably to cover legacy users.

~~~
JonathonW
VS Professional is not discontinued:
[https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-
vs](https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs)

You can buy both it and Enterprise online. Not sure why Xamarin says to
contact them for a quote, except that Xamarin's sales people really like to
talk to people.

~~~
iolothebard
It's free in your MSDN if you're subscribed. I downloaded them all :-)

So if you're a VS user already, it's likely bundled with an MSDN subscription.
Just link it to your Xamarin account and you're done.

------
CodeWithCoffee
You can download Xamarin Studio for OS X or Visual Studio with Xamarin here
[https://www.xamarin.com/download](https://www.xamarin.com/download)

------
gokhan
How does it compare to React Native, anyone using both? I was just starting a
project with RN, will be my first React project. But I have years of C#
experience, so Xamarin way would be faster.

~~~
kcorbitt
I haven't used Xamarin, so take this with a big grain of salt. But my
understanding is that its API is similar to that of the underlying platform,
meaning that it's mostly imperative and you write and interact with views in
much the same way you would in Objective-C or Java, just in a different and
arguably better language (C#).

React Native has a different philosophy -- it intentionally abstracts away the
platform APIs entirely, and unless you're writing a native plugin you're
_only_ able to access a React-centric API. This is a lot more ambitious and
leads to a great developer experience when it works. Some people however feel
that it's a misguided effort and that you can't expect to write fluid mobile
applications without interacting with the platform primitives directly. The
jury is still out on how well it will scale and there definitely still are
pain points with both the developer experience and app performance, but many
people including myself have written production apps in it and in my opinion
it largely delivers on its promise.

~~~
nbevans
Correct. The Xamarin API is 1:1 aligned with the native platform. To the point
that it is almost entirely generated from automatic tooling with the odd "fix
up" here and there.

Xamarin Forms however is a framework that performs abstraction, in a similar
vein as React Native. Xamarin Forms is built upon the Xamarin API.

~~~
nxh
The great thing about Xamarin Forms is you can use Dependency Injection [1] to
access the Native features. I started with Xamarin Forms without any pre-
knowledge of iOS or Android development. I use Xamarin Forms on a daily basis
and share 99% of my code.

[1] [https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin-
forms/dependenc...](https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin-
forms/dependency-service/)

~~~
pc86
Is it on GitHub? I've been working with C# for a decade and will be getting
into Xamarin now that it won't cost me thousands of dollars to do so. It would
be great to have some Open Source examples to look at!

~~~
nxh
There are some good tutorials about Xamarin Forms, e.g.
[https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin-
forms/getting-s...](https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin-
forms/getting-started/introduction-to-xamarin-forms/).

Xamarin Forms Labs is a great open source project for controls and services
using Xamarin Forms: [https://github.com/XLabs/Xamarin-Forms-
Labs](https://github.com/XLabs/Xamarin-Forms-Labs)

------
swalsh
The thing that makes me most excited about microsoft buying xamarin, is I have
high hopes that mono + core will improve. While libraries are being ported,
there's still a bunch of dependencies on 4.5, which I understand dnx uses mono
for. I've wasted several hours trying to deploy my MVC app to a linux server
only to learn that the fix is to downgrade the version of mono i'm using :(

------
ZenoArrow
> "Microsoft will also be open sourcing the Xamarin SDK over the next few
> months." ... "Included in this open sourcing is the Xamarin Forms library
> that provides a cross-platform toolkit for building user interfaces."

This is great news! For those that aren't familiar...

[https://www.xamarin.com/forms](https://www.xamarin.com/forms)

------
grabcocque
I'd like to see a really thorough comparison of the advantages and
disadvantages of React Native vs Xamarin, but I doubt there are enough people
out there with in-depth experience of both to do the comparison justice.

------
fizzbatter
I don't know anything about Xamarin, but i've been needing to learn C# so this
is really nice timing for me! Learning Rust for my local server, and
C#+Xamarin for the mobile app interacting with it, exciting!

------
_wmd
Sweetness, the license change means anyone can use mkbundle with --static.
Essentially you can produce a single executable containing an embedded copy of
the mono runtime, this wouldn't have been possible been possible under the
previous open source license.

(edit: previous comment mentioned AOT, actually mkbundle doesn't support this
in a single step, you still need to manually AOT the assemblies inside your
executable and ship them side-by-side)

------
minimaximus
That's some incredible news. Thanks Miguel!

------
ZanyProgrammer
I still want a full IDE for Mac that is equivalent to VS and that is more
mature than Xamarin Studio (VS Cose doesn't count). Is rather have Visual
Studio for Mac than Xamarin Studio.

~~~
babuskov
I tried using VS some time ago and didn't find anything I don't already have
in other IDEs like Eclipse (I mostly write C++ and Java code). Except that it
is faster.

Perhaps I missed something that could increase my productivity... Would you
care to tell what features make VS so powerful for you?

~~~
pearle
IMO, being faster is a significant feature that increases productivity and it
shouldn't be casually dismissed.

~~~
babuskov
The difference is not really big and if that's the only thing, I think I will
stay on Linux/Mac.

------
melling
What's the status of F# on the Mac? Is it usable as a scripting language? I've
got a few tasks I'd like to automate. That'll give me a reason to give F# a
try.

~~~
0xFFC
Using functional ml-like programming language for developing Apps ? It is like
dream comes true , count me in . I am literally sick of Java.

~~~
SureshG
Have you tried any other JVM langs, especially kotlin -
[https://kotlinlang.org/](https://kotlinlang.org/) ?

------
nbevans
We just spent almost £2k in February renewing our licenses, doh!

~~~
natfriedman
We'll give you a full refund. Drop a note to hello@xamarin.com.

~~~
llomlup
Like I said. Brilliant.

------
zura
With all these MS open sourcing stuff stuff - any plans for Visual FoxPro? :)

------
molteanu
So how would I use this on Linux? I'm seeing different versions of VS to
download from the official website. Only VS Code is available on Linux?!
Does/will that contain Xamarin?!

~~~
nathankunicki
Visual Studio _proper_ is still a Windows only product. Microsoft's aim here
is to make Windows and Visual Studio the only solution you'll ever need to
develop for every platform under the sun, be it iOS, Mac OS, Android, Linux,
Windows, or web.

Visual Studio Code is a very lightweight semi-open source IDE for writing
code, and not much else.

~~~
svick
In what way is it semi-open source? The code is on GitHub under MIT:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode).

~~~
louhike
I think the "semi" was for "IDE", to compare it to Visual Studio.

------
Keats
Amazing news! I was looking for how to make cross-platform apps and the best
one was React Native and I already do enough React/JavaScript on the web to
want to do it elsewhere.

Looking at
[http://www.monodevelop.com/download/](http://www.monodevelop.com/download/)
though, does that mean that you can't write android/ios apps while on linux?
What's the reasoning behind that?

------
mwcampbell
Now that the full runtime and, presumably, the AOT compiler are being open
sourced, I wonder if someone will port them to Apple tvOS. I'm disappointed
that 6 months after the first beta of tvOS, Xamarin still doesn't support it.

Edit: Never mind; tvOS support has been in preview since October. I wonder why
it isn't in the stable release yet, but I guess it's just a low priority.

~~~
documan
[https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/tvos/](https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/tvos/)

~~~
mwcampbell
Thanks. Clearly I didn't research enough.

------
mikecu
Exactly what I was hopping for! I have about 7 Obj-C/Swift iOS apps but any
new one will be built with C#/Xamarin!

------
euroclydon
As someone who's never used Mono or Xamarin, but who has played around with
CoreCLR and the DNX tooling. I can't figure out whether to start developing
with Mono, or wait for CoreCLR to mature. I don't understand the roadmap.

~~~
ZenoArrow
CoreCLR is the future. If you're playing around because you want to build
something now, use the classic CLR or Mono. If you're playing around to build
up skills you can use in the future, go with CoreCLR.

------
feylikurds
Woah, I use NativeScript right now, but I will definitely download this and
try it out!

------
code_research
Kirigami! Kirigami! Kirigami!

[https://dot.kde.org/2016/03/30/kde-proudly-presents-
kirigami...](https://dot.kde.org/2016/03/30/kde-proudly-presents-kirigami-ui)

[https://subsurface-divelog.org/2016/03/announcing-
subsurface...](https://subsurface-divelog.org/2016/03/announcing-subsurface-
mobile-for-android/)

------
derFunk
That's awesome, and very fast indeed after Microsoft's acquisition of Xamarin.
Thanks to all involved, I was waiting a long time for these moves!

------
Zigurd
This is a testament to Miguel de Icaza and his team's ability to take on the
insanely tough and often thankless task of creating a cross-platform SDK. You
have to keep up with the changes in three native SDKs and develop your own
APIs, too. It will be interesting to have this code base available as open
source. I'd read it just for the comparative anatomy of native APIs.

------
systems
hope they port the full thing to linux (i mean xamarin studio, not visual
studio)

i was kinda always turned off, that xamarin treated linux as a second class
citizen

------
partiallypro
I would love to start messing around with Xamarin, and I definitely plan to
because of this news. However, I'm using Microsoft's Bizspark, and I have
Visual Studio Professional through MSDN. So it doesn't appear that I can
download Xamarin for free unless I go down to the Community version. Is this
correct?

------
0xFFC
I am thinking about buying new phone and it is _really_ tempting to buy
windows phone now. This Microsoft is not going to lose and better to make
investment on windows phone now rather than later.

------
Sindrome
Too bad I am already neck deep in react-native.

------
LLLukeJ
This is fantastic news. Hopefully a wider userbase and Microsoft support leads
to faster turnover on bugs and niggling issues.

------
_pmf_
Google should really, really be worried about Microsoft acquiring Jetbrains.

Like, shitting-their-pants worried.

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SureshG
It will be interesting to see what happens to RoboVM (because it acquired by
Xamarin)?

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bithush
I wonder what odds I would get on MS bringing the UWP to OS X and Linux and
maybe even Android?

~~~
casualviking
Xamarin already has tools to create Mac apps from .Net/MonoDevelop.

The work has been started - it's just a matter of time.

~~~
bithush
Indeed. To be honest I would be shocked if Microsoft don't make the Universal
Windows Platform a true Universal App Platform available on as many platforms
as possible.

It seems to be the way they are going. Then every MS product will become a
Universal App and Microsoft can deliver their software anywhere the UWP/UAP is
available.

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vespergo
Best news I've seen all year! +10 microsoft

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kelvin0
"...though iOS development continues to need access to an OS X machine..."

Now if MS could do the same thing they did with Ubuntu and add native support
for OSX, I'd be in heaven.

~~~
tinza123
That mostly depends on Apple, which is not likely to happen

~~~
oblio
"Likely" is an understatement. Apple will have to go into 90's style decline
before they let that happen :)

~~~
alkonaut
Would be more likely that Apple allowed compiling iOS applications on non-OS X
machines.

I can't understand why they don't want to maximize the number of developers
and the number of apps they produce for Apples stores. What would be the
drawback for them if I could build my iOS app directly in Windows?

~~~
dohboy
Perhaps quality? Having developers who know the environment they are
developing for instead of a lot of one-size-fits-all apps.

You can do it if you're the only supplier of a given service but as a customer
you will not get my money in a multi player game if I smell you took the
shortcut or have no idea what my platform is capable off.

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Ryuuke
Thank you, guys at MS, you're awesome !

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danburgo
omg omg omg - thx msft :)

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radicalman
so should you use react-native or xamarin now?

how much 'write-once-run-everywhere' is available in xamarin vs react-native?

I've long avoided .net and c# but now I'm getting interested because these
things are becoming open source.

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golergka
Inb4 "embrace, extend, extuingish": regardless of whether it's it or not, the
"embrace" step like thos one benefits everyone.

~~~
oblio
Plus at this point Microsoft should be more afraid of the "extinguish" part
coming from the OSS community, than vice versa.

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ddon
Super news, but I think more and more people will go React Native way...
Especially after React Native Mac OS X recent release!

~~~
cableshaft
I don't know. I've been spending some time learning React-Native, but it's in
fits and starts. There are several things that trip me up. I've got the basics
pretty much down now, but now I'm banging my head against local storage and
wrapping my head around Redux in general. It is interesting, but time
consuming. And I don't have much leisure time right now.

I've made stuff in Xamarin before, and it was a pretty smooth experience,
except for needing to have separate UI code for each platform. The language
and syntax never got in the way, it was more just having to look up the
corresponding UI elements (especially Android, where I have less experience)
and get those working from time to time. As such, I could generally code like
a fiend and get tons accomplished in a short period of time.

That being said, I really, really like how most of the React Native code is
the same, and it's quite possible I'll get to that point with React Native
also.

~~~
jinjin
> but now I'm banging my head against local storage and wrapping my head
> around Redux in general.

Have you tried using Realm for the local storage?

[https://realm.io/docs/react-native/latest/](https://realm.io/docs/react-
native/latest/)

It worked really well for us and removed the need for Redux.

~~~
cableshaft
Do you ever have to be connected to the internet to use local storage? I'd
like my app to be totally usable offline. I've heard of Realm, but something
made me think that it needed to be online. If not, I'll look into it.

Also why did it allow you to skip Redux altogether? I thought that was
necessary for anything remotely complicated.

------
sickbeard
Has the damage already been done though? Previous Xamarin pricing killed off
any investment in that product/ecosystem when the mobile game was hot

~~~
nbevans
It certainly killed off investment by people that had no money to invest in
the first place. Which enabled Xamarin to create a base of over 500,000 of
paying customers which tends to help when your business plan stretches about 5
years, to bump up the value as much as possible, before the planned sale to
Microsoft.

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astrange
Does anyone remember why Mono was created in the first place? There was no
reason to take C# seriously back then, and if we'd all just ignored it it
would've gone away or been replaced by something other than a copy of Java.

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jarcane
_Xamarin also supports development on OS X using Xamarin Studio. This too is
now available for free as a community edition for small teams, and is included
in MSDN Subscriptions._

This would explain the message I got on my Macbook the other day.

Sadly Xamarin isn't supported for F#, so it's still basically useless to me.

~~~
nbevans
Our entire Xamarin codebase is written in F# so not quite sure what you mean
by that.

~~~
saosebastiao
Wow! I tried, but with minimal .NET knowledge I ran into roadblocks everywhere
due to lack of documentation. Do you know of any standard/idiomatic ways of
defining viewmodels in F#? What about HTTP calls and JSON parsing?

~~~
nbevans
HTTP and JSON are well catered for on .NET and Xamarin. Newtonsoft.Json is the
most popular. And then HttpClient has first class support in Xamarin.

In terms of view models... how long is a piece of string? There are literally
dozens of approaches one could take. Or you could use Xamarin.Forms which is a
MVVM framework (amongst other things).

