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Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
- shanselman 11y agoWoot!
- torgoguys 11y agoIndeed! One might add "finally!" to that as well. From the outside, it seemed like such a natural fit that it was inevitable. From the inside, I'm sure a lots of things had to happen at MS. New Microsoft or not, it's still a big company with lots of people they have to support, so I doubt they take on such stuff lightly.
- PanosJee 11y agoI wonder why it was so much delayed!
- CosmicShadow 11y agoI hope this means I can get Xamarin through BizSpark now!
- milge 11y agoHopefully MS keeps expanding the Xamarin platform instead of mothballing it.
- Zekio 11y agoHopefully they will make it available through dreamspark and bizspark
- Avalaxy 11y agoOh yes, free licenses through Bizspark would be awesome.
- JBReefer 11y agoThere's not enough overlap for MS to want to buy Xamarin to shut it down. This is them putting their money where their mouth is vis-a-vie .NET expansion plans. Hopefully they'll keep Monodevelop under development, if they don't bring VS to Linux.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sremani 11y agoCongrats Miguel, you have done a fantastic job since 2003 for alt.net world. I hope bigger things are on your plate now at MSFT.
- azurelogic 11y agoI'm shocked that they have waited this long. They really seemed to ramp up support for Xamarin. Seemed like this was a no brainer.
- shadyrudy 11y agoI thought they would have done this 2 years ago. It seems that every Build, Xamarin was there in a big, big way.
- msoad 11y ago3 years ago this would be a sad news for Xamarin, today with the new Microsoft I'm glad to see this. Microsoft will not destroy Xamarin (I hope)
- giancarlostoro 11y agoMicrosoft is only a threat to JetBrains from where I'm standing and looking, I have a feeling they will fix up Xamarin the way we all hope they will. I really hope there will be a completely free option of Xamarin for Students and maybe even on BizSpark.
- livus 11y agoThere is already a free option of Xamarin for students.[1] Earlier there used to be a separate application process but now it is rolled into DreamSpark [1]https://xamarin.com/student https://xamarin.com/student
- Someone1234 11y agoThere's also the "Starter Edition" for everyone else: https://xamarin.com/starter https://xamarin.com/starter
- giancarlostoro 11y agoThank you both, I did not know, looks like you already get it through DreamSpark that was really fast (in the case of Student).
- nissehulth 11y agoStarter edition is pretty much useless. You may use it to "get a taste" of Xamarin, but you can't really make any useful apps with it.
- rs999gti 11y agoIf MS puts Xamarin licensing under MSDN I'd be really happy.
- rjsamson 11y agoCongrats to Nat and Miguel! This seems to make a ton of sense, and unlike other acquisitions by big corps this seems like a great move for both Xamarin and their customers.
- janvdberg 11y agoWow! Congratulations Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza (of Ximian fame). I remember reading this blogpost like it was yesterday: http://nat.org/blog/2011/05/xamarin/ http://nat.org/blog/2011/05/xamarin/
- solutionyogi 11y agoAs someone who works in .NET ecosystem, this is HUGE. I think there is huge synergy [1] to be exploited by combining Xamarin's team with language/compiler design/visual studio team. I think MS is extremely well positioned to be a leading development platform across desktop/web/mobile in the enterprise space with this acquisition. [1] Never thought I would ever use that word in a comment.
- Avalaxy 11y agoYes indeed, right now Xamarin is very very buggy and also pretty slow. I think the software will get MUCH better if the teams at Microsoft will start working on it.
- niels_olson 11y agoor its embrace extend extinguish?
- shanselman 11y agoNonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft. Disclaimer: I have been one of the ones pushing the last 5 years to make that statement true. ;)
- enraged_camel 11y ago>>Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft Yeah, that's why Windows 10 sends all your data to Microsoft by default and Windows updates no longer come with detailed explanations of what is in them. /s edit: judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. I guess all they had to do to win people over was make a few token contributions to the open-source community...
- jongalloway2 11y agohttp://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/update-history-windows-10 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/update-history...
- systems 11y agowhat does this mean for monodevelop .. i hope they maintain the linux version
- legomaster 11y agoI wonder if it means a transition to Visual Studio Code at some point. I doubt it would happen soon, but I feel like there's a lot more support behind that IDE than MonoDevelop.
- Yuioup 11y agoVisual Studio Code is an entirely different animal, built with JavaScript on top of node.js (like Atom). MonoDevelop is a clone of Visual Studio written in C# which isn't even remotely compatible with the mis-named Visual Studio Code. If they want to port MonoDevelop to Visual Studio Code, they would have to re-write all the features from scratch. At this point they might as well re-write Visual Studio to node.js and not waste time on porting MonoDevelop. I hope it doesn't happen. I certainly don't want to develop on an IDE written on top of a God-awful language with a ridiculously slow run-time.
- kayoone 11y agoDespite that, Visual Studio Code is pretty awesome though.
- Yuioup 11y agoI agree, but I wish they had chosen another platform to build it on. Maybe when we finally have a universal bytecode for the web and ECMAScript 6 then developing on it will be less painful. Let us hope.
- carussell 11y agoThe vscode source is very well "layered". It's not totally inconceivable that the vscode folks or some other team take it and allow you to choose at build time whether to target it's current DOM-backed UI or one backed by more "native" drawing routines and widgets.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Yhippa 11y agoI thought this was a forgone conclusion but I guess it never actually happened yet. Congrats to the team! Wouldn't it be cool if they gave this same treatment to ReactOS down the road? I think Microsoft has woken up to the power of open source technologies.
- king_magic 11y agoThis is awesome, fantastic news. Congrats to the Xamarin team, they are awesome people.
- JBReefer 11y agoThis is giant news for the .NET ecosystem. It means that MS is serious about their push into Mobile and Linux, and that .NET developers aren't going to have to work with Xamarin's ever-so-slightly-behind libraries anymore. It also means that MS now produces an IDE on Linux, which is a crazy change from 10 years ago.
- ealexhudson 11y agoMS already have one; Visual Studio Code. The crazy has been coming a while.
- pmalynin 11y agoEh Visual studio code is not an IDE. Last time I used it the C# support was pretty bad.
- PeCaN 11y agoIt's IDE-ish for some languages. I would call it a full-featured TypeScript IDE (with IntelliSense, syntax-checking, a decent debugger, etc) but not much else.
- pionar 11y agoYeah, it doesn't have debugging (of C# on Mac and Linux). I think the GP is referring to Xamarin Studio, which is an ok IDE, but pales in comparison to VS.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JBReefer 11y agoVisual Studio Code doesn't do an eighth of what VS 2015 does. VS 2015 on Linux with a full CLR would be huge. Think about the opportunities for existing enterprise programmers, alone.
- srameshc 11y agoWith this, I am hoping MS will put a lot more of effort into NativeScript.
- kayoone 11y agoWhy Nativescript ? Feels like it is a completely different direction to this.
- untog 11y agoI'm honestly amazed that it took this long. I've tried Xamarin before to make iOS apps but couldn't justify paying an ongoing subscription for what is basically a hobby project. I'd love it if MS expanded the "Starter Edition" to allow more fully fledged apps - they could be seriously competitive with Xcode.
- Analemma_ 11y agoI truly believe that it would've happened sooner, but Microsoft needed to wait until it had built up some degree of confidence among developers that the whole "new Microsoft" thing is for real. If they'd done it three years ago, everyone would've panicked, assumed that things like e.g. .NET on Linux were dead, and just written off Xamarin's offerings immediately. Now I think a lot of people are at least cautiously optimistic that Microsoft's cross-platform and OSS intentions are genuine. You can see it right here in this thread: as another commenter said, not that long ago this news would've prompted universal predictions of doom, whereas now people seem thrilled. Timing is everything.
- Nullabillity 11y agoWe're still talking about the Microsoft that's less than a year away from releasing Windows 10 and DX12. "New Microsoft" indeed.
- vyrotek 11y agoI imagine .NET devs around the world are rejoicing (myself included). I hope this means access to Xamarin through existing MSDN and BizSpark subscriptions.
- bkovacic 11y agoHope this means lower prices. Or even some free edition? :)
- solutionyogi 11y agoI strongly feel that they will provide a free edition which works with Visual Studio Code.
- bkovacic 11y agoI hope they do. I'm pretty sure that pricing is the key factor that is stopping xamarin from being way more popular
- martin1b 11y agoWould be smart to release windows phone support for free, but IOS and android support costs. More windows phone apps for app store for no cost to developer.
- miguelrochefort 11y agoI wonder what that means for Xamarin.Forms.
- baldfat 11y agoFixed or dropped within 6 months?
- wvenable 11y agoGiven the existence of the .Net core, I think Microsoft has little plans to look backwards. I wouldn't hold out much hope for Xamarin.Forms.
- UK-AL 11y agoWhats .net core got to do with xamarin.forms Xamarin.forms has nothing to do with winforms. It's a cross platform mobile UI library.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dcveloper 11y agoI'm hoping they open source Xamarin.Forms. The community has been clamoring for it. It has so much potential but it’s so buggy.
- davidw 11y agoMiguel finally gets his job at Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software... Congrats!
- ultramancool 11y agoHopefully this means the .NET for Android and iOS solutions will become better supported and (maybe, I hope) free and open source like the rest of .NET is now. Maybe not, I doubt there's any profit in it for them (or maybe there is since they'd likely make it part of VS), but I'd really like to be able to take .NET for mobile development more seriously.
- neximo4 11y agoWell its about time. I wonder if they waited for the prices of startups to turn down.
- marpstar 11y agoMy coworkers and I have been predicting (and hoping for) this for a long time. It'll be interesting to see how this affects licensing costs, particularly for smaller teams. The per-year-per-platform license really turns me off as a solo dev.
- jonsmit 11y agoHow much? I know it's undisclosed but it would be very interesting. Hopefully someone leaks it. The rumor was Miguel told MS to "F*#K Off" when MS presented him with an offer many years ago. This lead to CoreCLR being open sourced and Visual Studio Code being built. I'd like to know if by undermining parts of Xamarins business they were able to get them at substantial discount - especially with the tech industry downturn. Or if failure in the Windows Phone market has made MS desperate and forced their hand. Given it's undisclosed I'm guessing it's the former. I'd like to know if telling MS to "F#&K Off" was a good strategy :)
- coldtea 11y ago>The rumor was Miguel told MS to "F&#K Off" when MS presented him with an offer many years ago. This lead to CoreCLR being open sourced and Visual Studio Code being built. The rumor sounds bogus. MS has been collaborating with Xamarin (and it's previous incarnation) for almost a decade.
- jonsmit 11y agoThey can both be true. I think the valuation will be telling.
- coldtea 11y agoOK, here's another thing: Miguel has long advocated MS opening up their platform, and has welcomed every such move as it happened.
- jonsmit 11y agoCompanies have a long history of saying one thing privately and another thing publicly. If it were public then it wouldn't be a rumor.
- coldtea 11y agoWell, there's the public known facts and then there's a "rumor". I don't know why we're even discussing something as unsubstantiated as the latter. Besides, even if the price was public, one could read anything it wants it that. "Oh the number is low because MS undermined them". From what I've seen, the numbers for those companies like Xamarin are always much much lower that BS inflated unicorns with no actual business models... And there's another thing: for what Xamarin offers (which is in the mobile space, with their support for iOS/Android APIs etc), the open source CLR and the VS Code, the basis for the rumor, don't even figure at all. Nobody that used Xamarin will gonna turn to those products, because they simply don't do the same thing at all.
- skc 11y agoThis was always on the cards but still nice to see. Congrats to all involved. Should be some fun times ahead.
- draw_down 11y agoI stopped paying much attention to .NET because I switched to JS a while back, but I seriously thought this had already happened years ago.
- chx 11y agoXamarin bought by Microsoft two days after Skype for Linux can't join calls by new clients. Oh yeah. The future is bright. Just not for the Linux desktop pieces of Mono.
- coldtea 11y agoDesktop Linux was, is, and will probably always be a niche thing. And if the open source community is so great, as some of its proponents argue, let them build their own Skype. The non desktop pieces of Mono should be getting lots of improvements, though.
- yarrel 11y ago"Let them build Skype" is a good replacement for "Let them eat cake".
- coldtea 11y agoYeah, only in a totally different and irrelevant context, where only "let them" remains the same. The FOSS community weren't some hungry peasants that the aristocrats at Richmond took their bread away. On the contrary, they were shouting how they don't need those stinking "proprietary" products, and that they can do one better.
- yarrel 11y agoWhile stroking their neckbeards and drinking Mountain Dew? There are free services for voice, video and text chat. What is more difficult, politically speaking, is producing a free client for the Skype protocol. Clean-room reverse-engineering the protocol and producing a client that uses it without Microsoft raining down upon the project is not just a technical problem (or of not switching to cake).
- systems 11y ago"if the open source community is so great" if.. i dont see how they can be an if .. it is 100% absolutely great .. with all the great FOSS projects around, how much more evidence do you need
- SadismoNoise 11y agoWhat's with the MS shills and apologists in every MS post on HN?
- massemphasis 11y agoA friend of mine became extremely good at build systems and hacking them by making Xamarin's stuff build. They put so many tricky roadblocks in to prevent easy builds.
- chris_wot 11y agoFor once, I see an acquisition that might actually work! There must have been a blue moon. Satya Nadella is a breath of fresh air. I don't say that very often about top-level management (not that my opinion is all that important), I suspect if I was employed by Microsoft I'd feel proud of working there.
- fapjacks 11y agoAlso part of the deal with him running the place was to have Bill Gates return and spend a third of his time at Microsoft. Bill Gates has changed a lot over the years. I'm really curious how much of this change he (Gates) has played a part in.
- iolothebard 11y agoSWEEEEEEET! Sorry, I wanted to use it but when it runs me more than a full MSDN subscription, I decline.
- ridruejo 11y agoI have been following Nat and Miguel's progress since the Ximian days. This has been more than a decade in the making and I am incredibly happy for their hard-earned success
- mrpippy 11y agoMy reaction: what took them so long? This has seemed obvious for years now.
- nelp 11y agoWonder what this means for Xamarin University? Shouldn't that be made available for free on Channel9?
- TheLogothete 11y agoYou can get a few months free to dev esssentials right now.
- nelp 11y agoWonder what this means for Xamarin University? Shouldn't that be made available for free on Channel9?
- rbanffy 11y agoNot surprising.
- kpao 11y agoSo happy for Miguel and Nat. We worked with Xamarin when we ported Infinite flight from Windows Phone to iOS and Android. We wouldn't be there if it wasn't for them. One thing I'm really looking forward to is efforts on the QA front. I'm scared to update every time as things are frequently broken, especially on the iOS side.
- cm2187 11y agoHow long before Apple kicks them out of the apple store? I thought Apple always had a policy of limited tolerance toward xamarin (after having banned them once). Isn't them becoming MSFT a casus belli?
- sremani 11y agoIts Google which logger heads with Microsoft. Microsoft and Apple generally get along. Heck, for IPad Pro announcement Microsoft Office was featured on the stage.
- cm2187 11y agoApple is quite protective with its app store.
- tomjen3 11y agoApple is the market leader, which means they have the most to lose with Xamarin commoditizing the different mobile devices. MS, as the clear loser, has by far the most to gain. Which is why I expect MS to make Xamarin available for free, and push it quite heavily.
- V-2 11y agoMarket leader in what sense?
- brudgers 11y agoMy understanding is that Apple's issue was with dynamic runtimes and that Xamarin developed a statically compiled Mono runtime to comply with Apple's guidelines. The ground between definitions of "static/dynamic" eventually was sorted out.
- xenadu02 11y agoZero; it won't happen. Apple's stance has been stated and unchanging for years now. Statically compiled frameworks like Xamarin are fine. Interpreters are fine if the app ships with the code (no dynamic patching by downloading new code) or if the code is part of a reviewed/approved in app purchase. For JavaScript you also have access to the native code JIT too. The only thing you can't do is issue new code by bypassing App Review (except web pages / web apps) or have your own non-sandboxed JIT.
- big_paps 11y agoThis probably also means Unity3d will soon be able to use an updated version of Mono, because Microsoft wants to back them and doesn't force them to pay the full licence price.
- jonsmit 11y agoYes x1000!!!
- hokkos 11y agoSeriously unity could already do it without the old mono runtime with what MS offer : the Roslyn compiler for C# and the LLILC a MSIL bitcode to LLVM compiler for iOS, and the netCore runtime for android. Their C# to c++ compiler seem now a misguided way.
- danbolt 11y agoI'd like the option of that! Unity and C# are a great pair, but I'd love to have the newer C# features rolling out.
- fredliu 11y agoDefinitely Xamarin is geared towards the .NET ecosystem, at least for now. But .NET aside, as a cross-platform "platform", how does Xamarin compare with React Native? Anybody has experience in both of them?
- nelp 11y agoThe Windows Phone guys must just be hating this news. #WindowsPhone is Dead.
- bitmapbrother 11y agoThis really doesn't change anything.
- UK-AL 11y agoNot really. People will develop on this platform in order to share code between iOS and android. However it also makes it easy to add windows phone.
- efdee 11y agoAll three of them!
- RUG3Y 11y agoI really love the C# language and I'll be really excited if this means that C# is a better choice for non-Windows platforms down the road.
- ed_blackburn 11y agoThis has been coming for a long while. Lots of synergy. I'm not so interested in the client aspect, which is where I suspect Microsoft will gain most, but more in the synergy / potential convergence of Mono / CoreCLR. Good luck and well done to Miguel et al.
- nodamage 11y agoI wonder when/if they will announce pricing changes. I would love to use Xamarin but the current licensing fees (2 developers across iOS/Mac/Android) of $6k/year are a total non-starter. If it gets rolled into MSDN or BizSpark I would pretty much jump on it immediately. The current alternative of writing C++ that runs across iOS/Mac/Android/Windows is a massive headache.
- martin-adams 11y agoI think if Microsoft want to attract developers to building for Windows (including phones and tablets), then adding first class support in Xamarin and reducing the licensing fees would be a huge win.
- mixedCase 11y agoI'd definitely start developing for Windows Phone if they made Xamarin free and cross platform like .net. We're missing on a not completely insignificant part of the market that currently isn't worth the development and maintenance cost. If we could develop it from Mac and Linux boxes using the same codebase for the logic, we would most likely make the jump.
- bananaboy 11y agoBut you can build for Windows and Windows Phone right now for free in a better toolset than Xamarin. Visual Studio is much better.
- martin-adams 11y agoI understood that one benefit of Xamarin is to build once and target many platforms. If you're faced with iOS and Android as the top platforms, including Windows for minimal cost without a complete rewrite is quite appealing.
- st3v3r 11y agoBut it's more time and effort, which, when given Windows Phone's anemic marketshare, would probably be better spent improving and adding features to the iOS and Android apps.
- l3m0ndr0p 11y agoSay goodbye to this product in a few years. Resistance is futile
- momozaur 11y agoyep
- wehadfun 11y agoHow is this going to effect pricing?
- vijayr 11y agoIt would be awesome if they make it fully free. That is one way to take on iOS/Android. Microsoft doesn't have anything to lose anyway
- hokkos 11y agoGreat news, hopefully they will listen to the number one request and have cheaper prices.
- insulanian 11y agoWhat this means for MonoDevelop? Will it stagnate and die, or florish with fresh water from Microsoft's wells? What will be THE tool to develop for/on Linux?
- robwilliams 11y agoConsidering Microsoft is pushing to support devs on Linux and that the probability of Visual Studio being ported from Windows is near 0, I don't think Microsoft would kill off MonoDevelop.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- fapjacks 11y agoC
- insulanian 11y ago> What will be THE tool to develop for/on Linux? I meant it in .NET context.
- fapjacks 11y agoI know, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. :)
- xenadu02 11y agoThis has been so obviously coming for several years. I'm surprised it took them this long.
- look_lookatme 11y agoA core group of these people (in the orbit of Miguel/Nat) have been plugging away for like two decades on solving programs through building software. From mc, to GNOME, to Ximian, to Mono, to Xamarian. It was a lot of hard work and dedication and, above all, constant shipping. Good for them.
- Animats 11y agoScary. Xamarin sells tools to support multi-platform app development. Microsoft would want that only to the extent that it assisted migration to Microsoft platforms. Not away from them.
- swalsh 11y agoYou're thinking of old Microsoft. New Microsoft is all about Azure, the walled gardens of windows is slowly being left behind. Take a look at .NET Core.
- Nullabillity 11y agoTake a look at DX12, WPF, etc. The walled garden is still there and getting worse, they're just sacrificing their other markets.
- dguaraglia 11y agoYou are talking about destkop technologies that are necessarily tied with their desktop offering. When it comes to the backend/server side of things, Microsoft has making huge pushes to open source/extend their tools so that they can be used in other operating systems (mainly Linux.) My belief is they realize that the war for the server OS is kind of lost already, so they might as well offer tools that everyone can use on any of the many cloud platforms out there, while providing good tooling for their own PaaS solutions and make their money that way.
- momozaur 11y agoOh please. Old Microsoft!? Sure, we all know there have been changes in management but you think that everything got changed just because they did OSS some technologies? Second, since when OSS is such a big deal? That's only a big deal to MS because world has changed a lot while MS hold still for a long time.
- st3v3r 11y agoOld Microsoft wasn't that long ago.
- nshung 11y agoDo apps written in C# with Xamarin perform better than those written in React Native? What are the differences?
- iLoch 11y agoReact Native applications will be faster to develop thanks to React being inherently fast to develop. I would expect a React Native app to perform the same or better than Xamarin, due to React Native's asynchronous bridge approach. I don't have data to back this up, though.
- moonchrome 11y agoJS apps being faster to develop than C# ? Maybe prototype, but .NET/C# are superior dev platforms in every way.
- junto 11y agoDidn't Xamarin compile the C# to native? Isn't this an apples to oranges comparison?
- moonchrome 11y agoI'm not talking about execution performance - I'm talking faster to develop for. It might be faster to get "hello world" running in JS but once you have a few people working on a project and need to do nontrivial stuff not provided by "JS framework X" (in this case React) you'll see the value of having sane language semantics, static typing, tools and a mature ecosystem (much higher quality than JS).
- iLoch 11y agoThese tools exist in Javacript. I'm not saying C# is inferior at all, but JS is not inferior to C# here. TypeScript/Flow are backwards compatible with JS so you can add static typing to your JS at any time. React Native is capable of doing anything a native runtime can do because it too is native. High quality tools do now exist that bring type checking, Intellisense, hot module replacement, etc.
- netsparkmobiole 11y agowow this is amazing.
- jensvdh 11y agoMicrosoft is killing it lately. First Swiftkey, now this.
- codeulike 11y agoWhat now for RoboVm I wonder. Given that its Java based and probably overlaps with the main Xamarin product.
- knocte 11y agoMy next bet: Oracle will buy it from MS.
- captainmuon 11y agoHuh, didn't that happen a few months ago? Or what am I confusing this with? I thought this was announced end of last year already, with Xamarin moving there products to Roslyn and Microsoft offering Xamarin's products for non-Windows platforms... or did my mind just make that up?
- T-A 11y agoYou may be thinking of http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Apr-09.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Apr-09.html and http://www.pcworld.com/article/2847032/xamarin-integrates-with-free-visual-studio-community-to-let-developers-build-android-ios-apps.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2847032/xamarin-integrates-wi...
- moonchrome 11y ago.NET now needs a solid compile-to-browser story - which is presumably coming with some future version of web assembly (initial version doesn't support GC or threads) I'm looking forward to the day where I can ditch C++ for portability - .NET really is an ideal replacement for most apps - you can write apps that don't stress the GC by using value types and can control memory layouts relatively well (unlike Java) and at the same time you can use reflection, GC and all the niceties of modern programming platforms - unlike C++.
- qntmfred 11y agosilverlight ^_^
- mixedCase 11y agoThat's akin to saying suicide is a solution to any of life's problems.
- profquail 11y agoWhat about WebSharper? It's solid, open source (Apache 2.0) and they're working on adding C# support for the next major version: http://www.websharper.com/ http://www.websharper.com/
- ZenoArrow 11y ago> ".NET now needs a solid compile-to-browser story" You can compile .NET code to JavaScript using JSIL: http://jsil.org/ http://jsil.org/
- moonchrome 11y agoI've seen that but the showcase doesn't look very convincing compared to say emscripten. Do you know about any bigger projects using JSIL ?
- ZenoArrow 11y agoI've not used JSIL myself, but the performance of the demos seems fairly decent. Do you have any bigger .NET projects of your own you could try out? If you're looking for asm.js/wasm support in particular, you may be interested in LLILC, which appears to be a .NET Core to LLVM IR compiler, meaning you could make use of Emscripten to convert the code to asm.js: https://github.com/dotnet/llilc https://github.com/dotnet/llilc
- cm3 11y agoCongrats. Since Nat and Miguel met while applying to work at Microsoft and then went on to build GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) with major help from Federico, which was inspired by Microsoft COM, hence the name, it's nice they finally managed to join Microsoft.
- Happpy 11y agoA few days ago I though G would buy Jetbrains in the coming months. Now...
- GirlProgrammer 11y agoI love .net, but De Icaza is a tremendous liability for Microsoft
- beyti 11y agoI hope this means visual studio integration comes for free. As a paid indie developer for xamarin, being vs integration not included in indie license, was the worst thing about xamarin for me. for the issue in uservoice 2700votes ATM:https://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/234640-xamarin-suggestions/suggestions/3682605-visual-studio-support-at-the-indie-level https://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/234640-xamarin-suggesti...
- ratfacemcgee 11y agoI always thought Xamarin was a MS product anyways. Which reminds me, i need a new shirt... EDIT: ahh, they don't do the free shirt promotion anymore :(
- bad_user 11y agoGiven that Xamarin bought RoboVM last year and that the project went closed source and raised prices just after that, it's fair to assume that RoboVM is dead. Also, I'm personally not happy about this. I think people on HN should know better. Besides a couple of black swans being the exceptions that confirm the rule, acquisitions is how projects die. This is because acquisitions are either defensive or acquihires. And even when done out of a genuine desire for progress, big companies end up choking these acquisitions to death, after all they weren't capable of such progress in-house, with the project members moving on after one or two years when their contract expires. But hey, people were excited about Nokia as well.
- moonchrome 11y agoThing is Microsoft is already developing a lot of the stuff that makes Xamarin tick in the open source under liberal licenses - a lot of the legacy Mono tech already got replaced by CoreCLR equivalents, some are in the process or will be in the future. Eg. stuff like LLILC - IL -> LLVM static compiler will make the AoT for iOS story work instead of using mono AoT - but that project is not usable right now. Binding APIs are some work but not impossible for OSS community to replicate if the CoreCLR and friends provided a portable platform with liberal licensing - so even if Xamarin disappeared it could be replicated - but I see no reason for them to shut it down. And the third part of Xamarin is tooling which they can roll up into their own product offering. Basically acquihire is a good scenario in this case because Microsoft is already moving towards these areas, Xamarin brings in talent and a bridge with working tech to provide transition.
- pori 11y agoTrue, there are projects that die, Parse is perhaps the biggest example thus far. But seeing as how Microsoft is interested in expanding it's reach in OSS, I don't see a problem. This will likely be bundled with VS (which will be pretty cool!) and possibly even open sourced itself.
- shrewduser 11y agoandroid youtube and maps were all acquisitions. i think it's confirmation bias you don't really think of all the many successful acquisitions only the bad ones stand out.
- stevehiehn 11y agoIf they make it free I'll use it.
- itgoon 11y ago'Bout time!
- kenshaw 11y agoI wouldn't be surprised if they followed this up with a purchase of Unity3d ...
- martijn_himself 11y agoThis would make a lot of sense. If Microsoft acquired Unity3d and updated C# language support to a recent version it would mean there would virtually no reason to use anything but C# for application and game development.
- shadowmint 11y agoIs it just me, or does it ring of the shrill sighs of relief from C# developers who have been watching their platform decline in here?
- eddie_31003 11y agoAs my man jeff spicoli would've said, "Awesome, totally awesome"
- rubicon33 11y ago"Anything you can do in Objective-C, Swift, or Java you can do in C# with Xamarin" What about the things that you can do in Objective-C but cant do in Java, or visa versa? iOS has some iOS specific features that I'm not sure how Xamarin could possibly map to Java.
- lenish 11y agoThere are platform specific APIs for that functionality. You can't necessarily do everything on each platform that you can on a given platform, but if you want some iOS or Android specific behavior you can implement it. You might have to wait a bit for new releases for features that come out in new OS versions, but that's not terribly surprising.
- ntaylor 11y agoXamarin offers common APIs for platform-specific behaviors when using Xamarin.Forms, otherwise, when targeting Xamarin.iOS or Xamarin.Android, you're developing with pure-native APIs. You will need to use the native provider for whatever action you're executing. If you'd like to be able to reuse common concepts cross-platform, then you need to write your own interface and provider model. Xamarin is the equivalent of a thin wrapper/intercace over the platform-implementations. Xamarin doesn't really "do" much, it just calls the underlying API which maps to the specific behavior. The type and method signatures for Objective-C and Java are very near synonymous in Xamarin/C#.
- Ryuuke 11y agoAwesome news for .NET devs, I hope they'll lower the price !
- perseusprime11 11y agoI actually think this is not going to do much for Microsoft besides bringing some great talent. In general web software development is slowly moving away from .Net to Node. if this is a play for mobile, then it will be more enterprise focused as I don't see the regular App Store developers using Xamarin.
- avasylev 11y agoDoes anyone know if most of Xamarin team located in Boston? The web sites has San Francisco as headquarters, but for some reason I always thought company is mostly in Boston. Curios how much this acquisition increases Microsoft's dev center in Boston.
- pianoben 11y agoI remember browsing through their job listings a year or two ago, which gave me the same impression. All of product engineering was in Boston - SF just has sales-type roles.
- alehander42 11y agoheroic stuff for miguel
- kul_ 11y agoSHIT!
- pritambarhate 11y agoIt will be interesting to see what happens to RoboVM which allows you to develop iOS and Android application using Java with shared code base. (Similar to what Xamarin does with C#) With third party JavaFX implementation even shared GUI code is possible with RoboVM. RoboVM was acquired by Xamarin in Oct. 2015 (https://xamarin.com/pr/xamarin-acquires-robovm https://xamarin.com/pr/xamarin-acquires-robovm)
- JonD23 11y agoToday, a pure coincidence to the announcement that Microsoft acquired Xamarin, my brother and I launched a preview into a project that we've been working on for some time now. This is a Xamarin.Forms UI Inspector called XenForms: http://www.xenforms.com/ http://www.xenforms.com/ Also, in the spirit of giving. I have released an open source version of a game in Xamarin.Forms and CocosSharp. It's a These Crazy Walls Clone. https://github.com/jonedavis/Xamarin.Forms-With-Cocosharp https://github.com/jonedavis/Xamarin.Forms-With-Cocosharp Hope someone finds it useful!
- JupiterMoon 11y agoEmbrace, extend... I will be interested in seeing what happens next. No sarcasm intended. This is not an attack or a warning. This is curiosity.
- D_Guidi 11y agofrom a 'top' comment (http://goo.gl/t3WvOL http://goo.gl/t3WvOL): "This will double the number of people at Microsoft who love .NET and don't think .NET developers are dinosaurs for not wanting to switch to a scripting language invented in the '90s."
- scriptproof 11y agoYou should avoid to repeat stupid comments. JS was invented in 1995 (and the last version in 2015), C# was made in 2000, so 5 years after.
- joeyspn 11y agoWith the new MS backing I hope Xamarin adds other languages like TypeScript to their product... This would be awesome.
- joeyspn 11y agoWith the new MS backing I hope Xamarin adds other languages like TypeScript to their product... This would be huge.
- hawski 11y agoXamarin is employing for remote positions. How Microsoft will deal with remote workers or international offices? Will they all just become Microsoft employees/contractors?
- ff7c11 11y agoIt had been on the cards for quite some time. Like everyone, I'm hoping for a massive change in pricing structure.
- martijn_himself 11y agoI hope Microsoft focus will be on driving adoption of Xamarin (and therefore C#, .NET, and Visual Studio) rather than generating revenue. Current pricing is prohibitive for small shops and individuals. EDIT: a new era for Developers, Developers, Developers?
- gravypod 11y agoI'm very excited to see how JetBrains acts. They are one of the last competitors in this market that are planning on making a C# IDE. I would love to see how this turns out.
- dotdo 11y agoMicrosoft made some perfect move. I am wondering why Apple did nothing, it always claim it has the biggest cash flow
- coderguy123 11y agoMS wanted to buy Xamarin way back. Xamarin held back. I remember some comment to this effect from Miguel. Now that .Net Core looks awesome and will work with LLVM backend. Wouldn't it just another step for MS to create what Xamarin's core product is. I think Xamarin realized this and gave in. their IPO dream shattered. https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/400665313119055872 https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/400665313119055872
- user8341116 11y ago>there are people out there that think VS is a good IDE >they don't just use vim or emacs >there are people out there that think Xamarin is a good technology >there are people out there that want to build mobile apps in a dead Microsoft design pattern (MVVM) I want off this wild ride.
- dowrow 11y agoHold on, are you telling me Xamarin was not a Microsoft product?
- smanuel 11y agoWhat's interesting about Xamarin is that they are very local about OSS (Miguel) but what they did was not very "open sourcey" - obtaining a perpetual license for Mono and this way making sure that no one else can put Mono on Android / iOS. Ever. And then charging 1000$ annually per developer, per platform. On the other hand they've made something that developers love (from what I've heard, I've never used Xamarin's stuff personally) so they deserve the credits. Congrats to the team.
- devdenver 11y agoAs a Xamarin subscriber, I'm guessing the future success of the merger (and product future) depends on: 1) addressing the price-point, 2) core clr integration, 3) retaining the top engineering talent at Xamarin, 4) addressing the iOS designer-specific issues A couple notes: For most LOB apps, I'm not convinced the code re-use is significant. The bulk of work is in the interface and navigation which is, necessarily, handled by coding android / ios specifics. Despite noble effort, the iOS design essentially needs to be done in xcode (point 4 above). The build/release process is and (presumably) always will be locked behind the gates of technology's North Korea (Apple). They can throw a switch and restrict 3rd party runtimes if and when they choose. For businesses in the 5-100 million range, writing an expense app in 2017, MSDN Xamarin should be a logical choice - but it has to be a platform with the reliability of .NET and a simple cross-platform designer. For app-centric startups, games, POS systems, etc. - it's probably a bad move. For msft devs (and we are aging) it's win-win. The lure of C# gets you into mobile dev, and you will learn iOS and Android in the process.
- ordbajsare 11y agoYAAAY Xamarin for free
- devdenver 11y agoAs a Xamarin subscriber, I'm guessing the future success of the merger (and product future) depends on: 1) addressing the price-point, 2) core clr integration, 3) retaining the top engineering talent at Xamarin, 4) addressing the iOS designer-specific issues A couple notes: For most LOB apps, I'm not convinced the code re-use is significant. The bulk of work is in the interface and navigation which is, necessarily, handled by coding android / ios specifics. Despite noble effort, the iOS design essentially needs to be done in xcode (point 4 above). The build/release process is and (presumably) always will be locked behind the gates of technology's North Korea (Apple). They can throw a switch and restrict 3rd party runtimes if and when they choose. For businesses in the 5-100 million range, writing an expense app in 2017, MSDN Xamarin should be a logical choice - but it has to be a platform with the reliability of .NET and a simple cross-platform designer. For app-centric startups, games, POS systems, etc. - it's probably a bad move. For msft devs (and we are aging) it's win-win. The lure of C# gets you into mobile dev, and you will learn iOS and Android in the process.
- anonbanker 11y agoMiguel got the buyout he's been hoping for all this time. Congrats to him for this. it's been a long road making Microsoft open, but nobody more than de Icaza should be given the credit for this.
- simonebrunozzi 11y agoTL;DR here: https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-Summaries/2016-10.md#3-microsoft-acquires-xamarin https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-Su...