
Microsoft and Xamarin partner - bratsche
http://blog.xamarin.com/microsoft-and-xamarin-partner-globally/
======
programminggeek
This is not surprising at all. I've been wondering if/when Microsoft would
just buy Xamarin. Perhaps this is the first step?

~~~
thatthatis
The scenario I keep hoping for is: ms buys xamarin, MIT licenses the entire
xamarin cross platform ecosystem (while charging for build services like
phonegap does), adds a "compile to html/css/js" feature so you can write your
web frontend in c#.

This scenario leads to the following: C# wins as the "cross platform mobile
language," window phone is the default first environment for cross platform
apps, and as developers we get an elegant "write once* run everywhere" that's
based on c#.

The asterisk: once plus ui customizations on each platform, so more like write
(1 + (.1 * num_non_wp8_platforms)) times

Unfortunately, though I think these moves would make ms a dominating player in
mobile and web for decades, I doubt they'll do this.

~~~
pnathan
That would be horrible.

C# is a pretty weak language[1], and .NET is layers of bad design choices
(both of these problems stem from a aggressive OO design methodology combined
with poor API taste + a policy of "never break".

Not only that, Microsoft is a monopolist by character, and an unpleasant
competitor. It would be a disaster for the world if they regained dominance
(much like other companies, but MS brings a particularly domineering flavor).

[1] It's adequate. It gets the job done, adequately. It doesn't shine except
in being adequate. I would rather use pretty much any open source language
than a .NET one.

~~~
rayiner
What's wrong with the CLR? It seems to be better for a cross language runtime
than the JVM.

~~~
stusmall
I see people say this but I've never seen an actual reason. I know the CLR was
built with this in mind with things like CLS but that doesn't seem like that
huge of a deal. There are also some naughties in the JVM like how generics are
handled, but that seems more like knocks against the JVM as a whole rather
than its cross langauge support.

So legitimate question, is the CLR better than the JVM at cross language
support and if so what makes it better?

~~~
pjmlp
> So legitimate question, is the CLR better than the JVM at cross language
> support and if so what makes it better?

Yes in the early days, because JVM was initially designed just for Java and
many bytecodes are directly related to Java semantics.

Meaning any language that targets the JVM has to adapt their semantics to Java
semantics at the bytecode level, hence the tricks mapping closures to
anonymous classes as one example from many.

This got better with the introduction of new bytecodes in Java 7 and the
upcoming Java 8, but it is still a Java VM at heart.

The CLR was designed as language agnostic, meaning its design had to support a
good implementation of VB, C# and C++ on day one, alongside other languages
from Microsoft partners like Eiffel and COBOL as two possible examples.

There is inclusive a .NET ABI for interoperability between languages, CLS
(Common Language Specification).

So the bytecode is much more generic and more low level than the JVM bytecode
is.

Then thanks to the work done on IronPython and IronRuby, it got the DLR part
with allows for better performance of dynamic languages implementations. Since
initially CLR was mostly targeted for strong typed languages.

Nowadays both platforms are quite similar in terms of language support.

------
sigzero
Good for Xamarin (I hope). I am a fan of Miguel de Icaza. I asked him a
question about Gnome programming and he sent me a book on it. Nice guy.

~~~
silverbax88
I have told people in the past that for every hyped up Mark Zuckerberg - guys
who are thought of as programming geniuses by the masses but in reality are
just kid hackers - there are guys like Miguel de Icaza who are the real deal
and the mainstream world has no idea exist.

~~~
michielvoo
Besides his skills as a software developer, I am impressed with the fact that
he has held on to his vision and led his company from Ximian, through Novell,
then Attachmate and onto Xamarin.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
I credit Nat and Miguel for making Linux on the desktop a _possibility_. (I
believe it was Ximian desktop on RedHat that made people finally stop and
think, "Hey, there might be something to this after all.") That being said, I
wish they had continued down that vein, instead of switching gears to try to
make a Microsoft technology "cross platform," and basically failing at the
ideal. I tried several times to run a Windows program under Mono, and never
could get one to work. For all the talk about how C# is an "open standard,"
there was always some library that wasn't open-source and hadn't been compiled
for Linux which would prevent the program from working.

~~~
baq
I think you missed the point of Mono. Windows compatibility is one thing, but
being able to use a _really_ nice language that is C# and a _really_ nice
stdlib that comes with the CLR on non-Windows OS-es for development is
something completely different.

~~~
magnet_ball
The BCL is such a great tool that I am sometimes baffled by other languages
heavy reliance on package managers like npm or gems to get basic
functionality.

It is consistent, well behaved and while not complete, it is very solid. The
only complaint I have are that it has some dark corners (System.Diagnostics
come to mind) and the fact that non of the classes are easily used for testing
and that I have to wrap a lot of basic functionality like file system access
or the TcpClient to be avle to test my classes.

------
Xelom
This is better than buying Nokia! Finally some smart move from Microsoft.
Because C# is a fantastic language, it has powerful tools which other
languages lack and Xamarin gave developers a great opportunity(price is high
though). I really can't understand some people that are in doubt with
Microsoft support to C#. It is the best thing they have done and Visual Studio
is the second in my opinion. And Microsoft is well aware of this, everyday we
can see Microsoft making a move about C#, .Net and Azure ecosystem. Nowadays,
Google is more popular for stopping services and no one bats an eye. Give
Microsoft some credits guys, at least for things they are doing great.

------
binarycrusader

      ...an extended 90-day trial (enough time to write the next
      Instagram or billion-dollar Enterprise app from scratch!)...
    

Seems a tad hyperbolic to me.

I wish Microsoft would just buy Xamarin and freely license the runtime to all
under liberal (e.g. MIT/BSD) terms. That would surely be a big win for C# from
a mindshare / platform growth standpoint.

------
mikecaron
A huge applause for Miguel, he's been laboring over this for such a long time
and it's amazing to see the fruit of his passion and perseverance.

------
donnfelker
Great idea, hard to execute in the real world. I know, I've done it. I built
an app with Xamarin about 3.5 years ago. Released it as an MVP to the App
Store. I wrote the Android version as well and released it (but went native
android because I knew it).I eventually wanted to upgrade some features on my
iOS app (Xamarin). I tried finding contractors to do it, and the lowest I
could find at the time were around 90/hr. While I could find great iOS devs
for half of that. I ended up having an iOS dev re-write the app in Obj-C for
much cheaper than it would have been to add new features to the old Xamarin
app.

Moral of the story - The idea is great. But the problem is that no one knows
how to use Xamarin and those that do charge a premium. If the app is native
you can find many more qualified devs that know how to code for the platform
at a much more affordable price. All my apps are native now. No more Xamarin.

I loved the product, but from the business side it didnt make sense
financially for me to continue to go down that road. Worked great to prove the
MVP though.

~~~
keithwarren
3.5 years ago is the key. Xamarin has come a long way in the past 12 months,
not to mention the past 42.

Developers who know this have grown considerably in that period as well.

On an aside, 90/hr for a competent dev is cheap. I know most people on HN
don't make a salary that equates to that but freelancers have an entirely
different set of concerns and 90 is low.

~~~
magnet_ball
I've seen a lot of talk about how far Mono has gone in recent times but not
much in writing. Do you have anything about the progress that was made? Blog
posts, announcements, anecdotal evedence? I'm looking for stuff to show to the
team so we could consider expanding our C# development to linux too.

------
w0rd-driven
I was excited to see the MSDN discount, realized it was double business
licenses (Android and iOS bundled together) and _doesn 't_ apply to BizSpark
or DreamSpark. The discount makes both not much more than a single business
license. I can suspect not including the "free" MSDN tiers was done on purpose
as well, likely on MS' side. No discount, no benefit of the extended 90-day
trial. I can't help but feel my puppy is kicked yet again.

The normal trial is likely not that bad but I consider more than my cost of
Visual Studio (yes, free but still) is too big of an investment, at least to
pull the trigger. The price to stay in my IDE of choice is pretty steep but
there is extreme merit to that over say MonoDevelop.

I'm happy for the partnership but I shouldn't have expected any more than what
I'm being given. That's my problem, but one I felt the need to lament about in
case someone else tries to do their own digging to come to the same
conclusion...

~~~
rodh257
I was hoping to sign up to their training program using our Microsoft Partner
Network MSDN but alas that is also excluded :(

------
TylerE
If this results in a useable, performant (e.g. NOT mono) C#/CLR implementation
on *nix, that makes a lot of things very interesting.

~~~
chollida1
> If this results in a useable, performant (e.g. NOT mono) C#/CLR
> implementation on *nix, that makes a lot of things very interesting.

I'm not sure what yiou mean by this.

Do you mean you want a new implementation that inst' mono? or that you don't
believe that mono is fast?

if its the later then I'd have to disagree with you. We use mono for a real
time trading system and find it to be more than capable of handling our needs.

~~~
friism
This is a nit-pick of mine, but Mono seems to be always at the bottom of this
benchmark:
[http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)

If you could share details on Mono tuning for server workloads, It'd be very
interested.

~~~
marshray
Looking at the error count column suggests that the benchmark setup is just
plain broken. I can't imagine the times are accurate.

~~~
pekk
After many of its iterations have been posted to HN with little improvement in
quality, it's clear that the point of the benchmark is to tout certain
languages like Java, so this is not surprising

~~~
lmm
I don't think this is fair. Is there a better alternative available?

~~~
marshray
There's the old favorite [http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-
programming-lang...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-
languages-are-fastest.php)

But it's down at the moment
[http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/shootout.alioth.debian.or...](http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/shootout.alioth.debian.org)

------
Morgawr
I'm sad, since Xamarin, the development for Monodevelop and the focus on Linux
systems has become abysmal and terrible.

This is just a very very sad sellout tactic. Way to kill off the Linux
ecosystem.

~~~
CmonDev
Then open a profitable Linux app store. If you are making something good
people will make a road to your house.

~~~
pekk
I suspect this is tougher than throwing up a website

------
runfaster2000
Here is the MSFT announcement:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/11/13/pcl-and-
ne...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/11/13/pcl-and-net-nuget-
libraries-are-now-enabled-for-xamarin.aspx)

------
gesman
I love that!

I might even consider buying MSFT stock after 12 years of ignoring it... :)

~~~
judah
It's shot up nearly $10/share in the last couple months. Just unloaded mine
the other week for a nice profit.

------
melling
Is there a way to toe dip into this? I've got a a bunch of Objective C code
and I'd like to try some C#, which I could then use for my Android app. My
hesitation with any non-blessed solution is that you can get 90% of the way,
then you're screwed by some limitation.

~~~
CodeCube
You can bind objective-c libraries so that they're usable from a Xamarin app:
[http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/binding_o...](http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/binding_objective-c/)

Same goes for Java libs:
docs.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/java_integration_overview/binding_a_java_library_(.jar)/

------
forgotAgain
To me this seems mostly about Microsoft Phone(and perhaps in the future
tablets). It will help to get more WP apps out there if all it takes is a
rebuild of a Xamarin iOS or Android project. Makes sense. I'm guessing Xamarin
gets a cash infusion in return.

------
fidotron
It's possible to start to see an internal problem for MS breaking out between
this and any development of VS to being web based: their tools division and
the Windows division appear to be heading in different directions.

For example, the tools people might succeed in making non-Windows clients far
too attractive and easy to deploy to, while simultaneously making sure you
don't even need to be on Windows to be using the tools.

Not saying this is without merit as plenty of people would love proper C#
tooling off Windows, and arguably the real use of Windows remains in hosting
Exchange servers, but it really looks like even MS don't believe Windows is
the end user system any more.

------
josteink
Such a shame Xamarin studio isn't available for Linux though.

I'm not getting a Mac to try it out, and in Windows I have VS.

~~~
knocte
XamarinStudio _is_ available for Linux, just under a different name:
"MonoDevelop".

It has that name because in Linux the Xamarin offerings don't work, therefore
they're not included in MonoDevelop.

------
CmonDev
20-city USA-only road-show?

~~~
j_s
Launch events that I could find (not Xamarin):

Dec 11 Buenos Aires Argentina -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032571149)

Dec 3 'Online New Zealand' (webinar) -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032562086)

Nov 28 Auckland New Zealand -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032570917)

Nov 27 Santiago Chile -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032569260)

Nov 26 Wellington New Zealand -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032570924)

Nov 21 Brno Czech Republic -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032568253)

Nov 19 Praha Czech Republic -
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032568250&culture=en-
US)

Search:
[https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/AdvancedSearch.aspx?cultu...](https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/AdvancedSearch.aspx?culture=en-
US&evtTyp=1#culture=en-
US;advanced=true;pageNumber=1;sortKey=date;sortOrder=ASC;pageEvent=true;hdnInitialCount=1;startDate=11/13/2013;endDate=2/11/2014;kwdAny=;kwdExact=Visual%20Studio%202013;eventType=1;searchcontrol=yes;s=1)

------
CmonDev
The s..t just got real!

