Xamarin lets you build native Android, iOS, and Windows apps on a shared C# codebase. Now it's included in every edition of Visual Studio at no extra cost! You can use your existing skills, teams, and code to deliver amazing native apps with no limits. But, where do you start? In this talk, I'll show how easy it is to build apps with Xamarin, and share tools to help you be productive. We will build and debug our first mobile app together. Then we'll see how to build apps faster with Xamarin.Forms. Mobile app development has never been more exciting. Don't miss this one!
Xamarin IS
Native User Interface: Apps need to look and act correct per platform.
Full SDK Access: As a developer we need to add the latest and greatest features
Native Performance: Needs to be fast and fluid
When you think of cross-platform mobile development you usually think of
=> building apps 3x in 3 languages – kind of a silo approach (swift / java / c#)
Or maybe write once / run anywhere – shoving in a bunch of HTML and Javascript together
You might also think of any number of Javascript mobile abstraction libraries (NativeScript / ReactNative)
If you take a look at how Xamarin works =>
Shared backend business logic written one time in C# shared across all of these platforms.
Place for your:
Models
View Models
Service calls
Data persistence
Coupled with truly native iOS / Android / Windows User Interfaces, accessing all the APIs right inside of Visual Studio
As .NET developers, we’re already a little familiar with how that works on Windows.
You start with .NET framework, the namespaces and everything we love about C# development.
Then, when we build for a platform such as UWP or ASP.NET, you download an SDK to get a new set of namespaces to integrate with that platform we’re building for.
Think of it the same for iOS and Android. You get all of the .NET namespaces you know through Mono, but Xamarin exposes all of the Native SDK APIs for iOS…
…and Android. With all of the features of .NET and C# 6.
Great native performance
Talking about how the apps are compiled, they aren’t cross-compiled or interpreted
Full Ahead-of-Time compilation for iOS
Native ARM binary
Advanced Linking strips out the parts not used
Not cross-compiled
Just-in-Time compilation at startup for Android
Mono runtime installs beside the Android Runtime
Best of all, Xamarin is included for free with every version of Visual Studio.
Everything we’re talking about: Xamarin SDKs for iOS and Android, Xamarin’s plugins, Xamarin’s Mono -- all open source.
Two great IDEs
Visual Studio
ReSharper
Team Foundation Server
Favorite Code Coverage and Profiling Tools
Xamarin Studio
Free IDE for the Mac
Getting started is as easy as installing visual studio and checking the Xamarin Mobile Development checkbox. You’re ready!
…and if you already have VS installed – there’s no need to find the right place to add VS features. Simply visit Xamarin.com/Download. Xamarin’s universal installer will patch your setup with all of the Xamarin bits you need.
If you are looking to get started will a fully baked application simply head over to Xamarin’s pre-built page featuring these apps and many more!