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Xamarin
- jon-wood 10y agoWhile it does comply with title rules, I feel this could use a better title - have they just moved to Github, or did someone just find Xamarin interesting and decide to post their Github page?
- sdx23 10y agoI agree, don't understand what this post is about.
- SquareWheel 10y agoAgreed, I'm also confused. While I do like the title rule, the literal <title> tag in this case has just been generated by Github. The HN submission could be more clear.
- dcosson 10y agoIt was announced that it was going open-source a few weeks or months ago, so maybe today's the first day it's up on github? Or someone just happened to notice it today.
- Artemis2 10y agoMaybe "Xamarin on GitHub"?
- jon-wood 10y agoSince I'm just starting to learn it, does anyone have opinions or tips around Xamarin? Specifically I'm building a toy Android app to learn the stack, but I'm curious as to just how much reusability there really is between Android/iOS and other platforms.
- yulaow 10y agoYou must know how the UI work in both oses if you want to be capable of using xamarin efficently. Yeah, there is XamarinForms that tries to solve that problem, but it is very... bad, right now.
- magnumkarter 10y agoAnyone who is serious about cross platform mobile development, whether it be Xamarin or React, needs to be well versed in Cocoa and the Android SDK.
- rpgmaker 10y ago> Anyone who is serious about cross platform mobile development, whether it be Xamarin or React, needs to be well versed in Cocoa and the Android SDK. Then why would I go the Xamarin route in the first place? The whole point is to avoid having to learn both platforms. Personally, I'd rather struggle with two native codebases than to struggle learning an imperfect abstraction that still requires me to learn both platforms.
- jon-wood 10y agoFor me the point is being able to reuse the core code, in this case the logic of a small game, but it could be API integration just as easily. So far the C# abstraction of Android has if anything been easier to use than the official Java API, or at the very least less verbose.
- hart_russell 10y agoXamarin forms is good for very limited uses. They give the basic layouts that each platform supports and that's about it. So if your app is simple, it's a great option.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hart_russell 10y agoIf you're going to make a shared backend between Android, iOS, or other platforms Xamarin supports, I highly suggest using MvvmCross to guide the structure of your project. I've worked on a project with a custom backend and it was a monster of a codebase that I never was able to fully understand. However, if it's mostly just UI and little backend, do your own backend, because MvvmCross would introduce unneeded overhead. Let me know if you have any other questions.
- cptskippy 10y agoWe maintain a large app using MVVMCross, it was originally using Forms in the PoC but had to be rewritten because of a number of issues. Off the top of my head I remember there were a lot of UI issues, binding to native modules was next to impossible in some cases, and it was buggy and unstable for complex interaction.
- sjmulder 10y agoI started experimenting with Xamarin after they made it free with the open source announcement and I'm cautiously optimistic now. I can work around the works of Xamarin Studio (or the VS plugin) and I like C# and Swift about equally, but app startup time specifically seems subpar with Xamarin. Edit: more on topic, the open source move is fantastic! I felt the money might be worth it for not only the tooling but also the top notch documentation, but I've never been able to convince any of my bosses on this. Apps built with Xamarin (or a similar system where you bind to platform API's) or so much better to build and use than these cross platform platforms.
- tluyben2 10y agoI wrote a PoC (Proof of Concept) a few years ago of recompiling Xamarin iOS apps to Android without code changes and we released a few apps using that. It is especially handy for LoB (Line of Business) / internal apps which actually are very usable like this. Clients loved it as they only had to pay once. It has parts of the Core Graphics and Core Animation implemented as the last app I ported with it was heavy on those. This was before Forms came along. No clue if anyone would be interested in it, but i'm cleaning up the code to put it on github as open source.
- kalyanganjam 10y agoThat would be quite interesting to see(and use?).
- wingerlang 10y agoIs it better than Forms? It sounds the same, so I doubt it would be very interested for Xamarin.Forms users.
- tluyben2 10y agoWell it is different in that you write apps with the iOS API and recompile for Android. So it is an implementation of the iOS API on top of the Android API. It was a PoC so 'better' is not really a related term :)
- wingerlang 10y agoI see. I guess that is different.
- udkl 10y agoThis would be interesting. I'm looking to create a MVP for a game like app and am researching ways to make it cross-platform compatible without sacrificing performance.
- tluyben2 10y ago
- iofj 10y agoHow does Xamarin compare with other ways to get platform native across all platforms ? There's haxe (actionscript-like, but typed), which has lots of libraries. There's QT. I haven't even followed that well which others exist.
- hart_russell 10y agoThere's also react native.