
Xamarin for All - JamesStuddart
http://cynicaldeveloper.com/podcast/5/
======
FlorianRappl
If Xamarin would be painless to use I guess we would see a lot more guys
advocating it. However, personally I know quite a lot of app developers who
tried Xamarin and disliked the quality of the tooling.

I hope that Xamarin keeps on improving as I believe it still could be (one of)
the best x-plat option.

~~~
snarfy
I installed VS2015 + xamarin + VS emulator for android, downloaded some
samples, hit F5, and they all ran fine.

The tooling is actually pretty good. Now the problem is a lot of the libraries
I want to use are native android/java which means doing a lot of C#/java
interop.

~~~
swsieber
How painful is that? I might consider that a tooling issue.

Ideally, you should be able to specify the java dependencies you want and get
some magical interface file generated for you in C# that makes it so you don't
have to think so much about the interop, or at least remove any tedium /
boiler plate. If that's not there, then I'd say it's a tooling issue.

~~~
te_platt
It's pretty painful. I love using Xamarin and don't often need to use a native
library but when it comes up it is the worst part of the Xamarin experience.
There is a tool to help the process on Ios ,objective sharpie, but it's not
the easiest thing to use either.

~~~
migueldeicaza
I have a team of developers that binds the most popular Android and iOS
libraries. We bind the libraries that our users request.

If you have some of those that you would like us to do, we would love to help
you. Anything to remove the friction from using C#.

~~~
h_r
What about those of us who like F# and want to use that? Are you supporting
that as well?

------
j_s
Xamarin has some pretty sweet tools (Inspector, Profiler) that are only
available for Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers.

This is a bummer because things like this live coding add-in require
installation of the Inspector, which adds some magic to every build to
facilitate dynamic assemblies:
[https://github.com/praeclarum/Continuous](https://github.com/praeclarum/Continuous)

The Xamarin Workbooks thingy appears to offer an IPython notebook experience
(a chance to reduce edit/build/test cycle for prototypes); not sure if it's
headed for Enterprise-only or not:

[https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-
platform/workbook...](https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-
platform/workbooks/)

------
tekism
Just so happens, today is Xamarin Dev days:
[https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Xamarin/Xamarin-Dev-Days-
Li...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Xamarin/Xamarin-Dev-Days-Live)

------
emmanvazz
Xamarin as a platform has made great advancements in the latest 1.5 years. I
have been using it for 2.5 years. Haven't had a chance to play with React yet,
which HN seems to leans towards. When I stared my app building platform
startup, I had to pick between React and Xamarin. Ultimately picked Xamarin
because we already knew the platform and Forms was mature enough, whereas
React wasn't that mature imo (few apps outside the facebook dev team were big
in scale). Xamarin Forms has its issues but now that it is open source the
community can tackle those issues together. Happy with my choice so far,
Xamarin has a great community.

~~~
floopidydoopidy
It's not for all though. The Xaramin homepage doesn't even mention Linux.

This is Xaramin for Some.

~~~
emmanvazz
I do most of my dev work on Windows or OSX. Xamarin also works with VS and it
seem like VS runs on linux
([https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux)).
It is the same as deving for Xamarin on Windows, you have to use VS.

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n00b101
Couple nitpicks about your site:

The link at the top of the page is broken. It says
"[http://CynicalDeveloper.com/podcast/5/"](http://CynicalDeveloper.com/podcast/5/")
but links to
"[http://CynicalDeveloper.com/podcast/6/"](http://CynicalDeveloper.com/podcast/6/")

Adding to the confusion, the podcast player is buried below, so it wasn't
obvious that this is in the page for listening to the podcast (as opposed to
the podcast being on some other page that's linked to from here)

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mixedCase
"for All" ...except if you're running Linux.

Thanks, I'll stick to native, React Native and Cordova.

~~~
j_s
Is your concern developing on Linux or targeting Linux?

I think Xamarin claims to have both cases are covered, though not nearly as
well as other platforms.

Any additional detail you can add to your anecdote would be appreciated!

~~~
mixedCase
Development on Linux. Xamarin dev on Linux is limited to MonoDevelop, instead
of Xamarin Studio which is the one where you actually get some tooling for the
purpose; and I'm not sure it's even possible to get anything of value done
with Xamarin using Linux alone.

Xamarin thought it was a great idea to fork MonoDevelop but completely drop
support for a platform the application was already running on. Something that
would blow my mind if I didn't know better the people involved with Xamarin at
the start. Rather, a specific person. No points for guessing correctly who it
is.

With that said, there are a lot of alternatives for Xamarin. Last year I
tested a bunch of mobile frameworks on low-end devices and it really doesn't
compete with native, and in fact lost to Kivy in runtime speed, a Cython-
based, community-run framework. Worth mentioning that it was about on par with
React Native.

------
dennispi
At buddybuild, we see tens of thousands of mobile projects from mobile dev
teams.

Of the teams looking for cross platform solutions (versus native iOS or
Android), Xamarin comes up on occasion.

However, React Native tends to be FAR more common as teams are looking for
solutions for "write once, run on many"

~~~
pawadu
Could it be that your service is more suited for people working with React?

In a slightly related note, I find it hilarious that people are using a
framework made by a company behind what is probably the most hated mobile app
ever.

~~~
dennispi
Ah, I should clarify and provide context.

We're a mobile focused continuous integration and deployment solution.

When deciding which platforms to support, we looked at current adoption for
Native iOS and Android (this was no brainer), Hybrid (PhoneGap, Ionic,
Cordova) and "emerging" platforms (React Native, Xamarin).

Ultimately, we decided to prioritize the others first. CI/CD service is
applicable to any mobile development team.. but to your point, buddybuild is
better suited to those other platforms, as those are the only ones we support.

In our experience (which also factors inbound requests), Xamarin is still
relatively nascent as compared to the others.

That said, you can should expect to see Xamarin support soon :)

Also, fwiw, Microsoft purchased Xamarin only recently.

~~~
pawadu
But this puts your first statement in a completely different light ;)

I should also note that React Native was announced in 2015 while Xamarin was
announced in 2011 (with Miguel's work on Mono being much older). Can you then
call Xamarin an "emerging" platform?

 _(disclaimer: I don 't use either platform)_

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toxik
For a podcast, the audio quality is really poor.

------
hulahoof
Anyone recommend any introductions to Xamarin?

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sickbeard
don't learn xamarin. it's a useless unmarketable skill. Nobody looks for
xamarin devs, they look for platform specific devs

~~~
vblord
I'm not saying Xamarin is the greatest tool, but it's definitely not
unmarketable. There are always several jobs around me on the job boards. But
if your comment was a generalization, then I guess you could make the same
argument for being a Swift developer because ios devices are only 10% of the
market. Telling people not to learn Xamarin is stupid. It maybe the right tool
for some people. And besides, Xamarin Android is VERY similar to native
Android Java code. If you learn Xamarin Android, it is a easy jump to native
android.

------
floopidydoopidy
We will probably keep our distance from it since it's now part of Microsoft
because I expect it won't be supported as well on anything other than Windows.

~~~
donblas33
Some of the products (like Xamarin.Mac) only run on macOS and a significant
percentage of the team develops on macOS. I wouldn't assume poor non-Windows
support.

~~~
jeeeeefff
I had a really poor experience with Xamarin on macOS. Especially with Xamarin
Studio IDE, it seemed like support was well behind Windows + VS.

~~~
mgamache
It looks to me that Xamarin would like sunset Xamarin Studio. This was easy on
Windows with Visual Studio, but on macOS I think they are waiting for the VS
Code (or whatever it ends up being) to be mature enough.

~~~
hunterwerlla
Sunset it? It's literally now named visual studio for Mac.
[https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-
mac/](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/)

~~~
mgamache
OK, it seems like they _have_ committed to Xamarin Studio renamed now to
'Visual Studio for Mac'. Doesn't make sense to me with the parallel effort
building the cross platform IDE 'Visual Studio Code'. Thanks for the
correction.

~~~
passivepinetree
VSCode isn't really an IDE as much as a text editor and competitor to Sublime,
Atom, etc. You can build in some languages with it, but it's not a competitor
to a full-featured development environment like Intellij's IDEA or Visual
Studio and not anywhere near a mobile development-oriented IDE.

In addition, VSCode is open source, so to some degree its direction depends on
what the community wants to happen with it.

That being said, re-branding Xamarin Studio (which in my experience, has been
buggy as all get-out) as Visual Studio Mac without many significant new
features seems more of a PR move than anything else. It'd be awesome if they'd
put more money/manpower towards fixing it.

