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I took a look at Xamarin recently to see how far it had come, and the tooling is really impressive. They seem to do a great job of keeping up to date with iOS/

by m0dest 7y ago

I took a look at Xamarin recently to see how far it had come, and the tooling is really impressive. They seem to do a great job of keeping up to date with iOS/Android SDK changes, too. But when trying to find an example of a native-feeling Xamarin-based app for iOS, I was really underwhelmed. I tried to find one that was (a) well-known and (b) third-party (not developed by Xamarin or Microsoft). The 4 contenders were: - UPS - 1/4 stars - All views of the app are awkward embedded web views. Every page has a full screen modal spinner. - Outback Steakhouse - 1/4 stars - Not updated for modern iPhones, so the whole app is letterboxed. UI is completely custom, so didn't attempt to feel native. Crashed as soon as it tried to get my location. - Alaska Airlines - 3/4 stars - Feels native-ish, nice "vanilla" design. Mix of native forms and web views. All UI related to searching flights & buying tickets is a web view. Every tap on the tab bar causes a full screen modal spinner. - FOX Sports - 4/4 stars - Wow, impressive. Lots of native-feeling views with their own branded styling. The custom widgets feel native. It was great to find one "hero" app for Xamarin (FOX Sports), but the fact that it's an outlier is a little concerning.

JamesBarney 7y ago
I think there is a little bit of bias here. Companies that are prioritize look and feel over cost probably are going native. And companies that prioritize cost over look feel are free are going xamarin.
wilsonnb3 7y ago
I believe the Fox Sports app was done by a company called WillowTree. https://willowtreeapps.com/company https://willowtreeapps.com/company They specifically mentioned when I was interviewing there that the reason their Xamarin apps are so good is because they already know how to make good native iOS apps. Also, I specifically asked about whether or not they would be using more technologies like Xamarin in the future and they didn't seem too keen on it. According to them, making a truly native seeming app in Xamarin isn't much less work than making two separate native apps.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  Thats the same experience with us except instead of Xamarin we used more popular cross platform mobile framework Flutter from google. Given most of business logic is maintained in back-end. Fron-end client be it mobile or web based needs UI and state management with some local data for offline storage. We thought it will be easy to share code across platform and we were so wrong. Given advances in mobile platform and Native SDK a company like Google, Microsoft or Facebook will not be able to keep up with native SDK and will be one or two generations behind. You can see the result in issues on flutter project. Also given Swift has Python like syntax and ease of use with powerful toolchain and Kotlin with nice syntax with functional programming efforts are not that different working with native SDK. Obviously this cross platform mobile framework are ok for simple crud apps. But when it comes to building a mobile app using modern vision, audio, keyboard, touch and gesture input along with modern sensors in the platform and provide a consistent UX is a big challenge. Also UI and UX have enough subtle differences across iOS and Android the code written to manage them is also substantial. So its nice to go native SDK route for mobile apps.
- postfacto 7y ago
  Many businesses go with Xamarin because some guy in a management mandates it because he feels it will be a silver bullet that will let them get around having to hire skilled native mobile developers. The reality is that to do Xamarin well you’ll have to wander outside out Xamarin Forms, and to do that well not only do you need native mobile developers but you need far higher caliber native mobile devs who are able to mentally translate swift/objc and android calls into their C# equivalent, and who have an idea of what’s going on the os when there’s a crash at a level lower than the .NET runtime caused by a native part that’s not apparent in the crappy Xamarin stack trace. Xamarin really only makes sense if your company has a mountain of existing complicated .NET code with priceless business logic that you absolutely have to reuse.
- yittcvz 7y ago
  I used to work for them. Great company, great technical talent. If anyone wants to move to Charlottesville or Durham I encourage you to apply! I live in CVille and I love it. The Xamarin folks are native platform engineers first. Xamarin teams comprise Android experts and iOS experts who did then went on to learn Xamarin on top.

by m0dest 7y ago

JamesBarney 7y ago

I think there is a little bit of bias here. Companies that are prioritize look and feel over cost probably are going native. And companies that prioritize cost over look feel are free are going xamarin.

wilsonnb3 7y ago

I believe the Fox Sports app was done by a company called WillowTree. https://willowtreeapps.com/company https://willowtreeapps.com/company They specifically mentioned when I was interviewing there that the reason their Xamarin apps are so good is because they already know how to make good native iOS apps. Also, I specifically asked about whether or not they would be using more technologies like Xamarin in the future and they didn't seem too keen on it. According to them, making a truly native seeming app in Xamarin isn't much less work than making two separate native apps.

dragonsh 7y ago
Thats the same experience with us except instead of Xamarin we used more popular cross platform mobile framework Flutter from google. Given most of business logic is maintained in back-end. Fron-end client be it mobile or web based needs UI and state management with some local data for offline storage. We thought it will be easy to share code across platform and we were so wrong. Given advances in mobile platform and Native SDK a company like Google, Microsoft or Facebook will not be able to keep up with native SDK and will be one or two generations behind. You can see the result in issues on flutter project. Also given Swift has Python like syntax and ease of use with powerful toolchain and Kotlin with nice syntax with functional programming efforts are not that different working with native SDK. Obviously this cross platform mobile framework are ok for simple crud apps. But when it comes to building a mobile app using modern vision, audio, keyboard, touch and gesture input along with modern sensors in the platform and provide a consistent UX is a big challenge. Also UI and UX have enough subtle differences across iOS and Android the code written to manage them is also substantial. So its nice to go native SDK route for mobile apps.
postfacto 7y ago
Many businesses go with Xamarin because some guy in a management mandates it because he feels it will be a silver bullet that will let them get around having to hire skilled native mobile developers. The reality is that to do Xamarin well you’ll have to wander outside out Xamarin Forms, and to do that well not only do you need native mobile developers but you need far higher caliber native mobile devs who are able to mentally translate swift/objc and android calls into their C# equivalent, and who have an idea of what’s going on the os when there’s a crash at a level lower than the .NET runtime caused by a native part that’s not apparent in the crappy Xamarin stack trace. Xamarin really only makes sense if your company has a mountain of existing complicated .NET code with priceless business logic that you absolutely have to reuse.
yittcvz 7y ago
I used to work for them. Great company, great technical talent. If anyone wants to move to Charlottesville or Durham I encourage you to apply! I live in CVille and I love it. The Xamarin folks are native platform engineers first. Xamarin teams comprise Android experts and iOS experts who did then went on to learn Xamarin on top.