I had high hopes for Xamarin. The appeal of it was strong: I could program in a functional language (F#) with libraries (.NET) and share my work with friends on

I had high hopes for Xamarin. The appeal of it was strong: I could program in a functional language (F#) with libraries (.NET) and share my work with friends on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Mobile. Unfortunately nothing worked. I was blocked at every turn. The FSharp.core assembly is in someway there and not there (create a project and it's in error-red text, but the compiled app runs). I asked and asked on the IRC channel how to fix it. Programs compiled in Xamarin would work on the host OS, but on Windows would complain about missing assembly. The same project on Xamarin would not compile in Visual studio for the same reason. I never figured out how to properly build executables for both windows and both, or how to arrange my project files to work on Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio. I never figured out how to fix this. I also tried to play with GTK with F#. Their GTK builder is C# only. OK, fine. F# isn't 1/10 as popular as C#. I know. So how about iphone? I could drop ObjC, rewrite my app in a language I admire, and finally bring my app to android. However, the sample F# ios app, without modifications, compiles to an executable that is too big for the trial limitation of Xamarin Studio. Wait, the sample "hello world" app (which is supposed to convince that the IDE is worth paying for) can't be run in the trial version of Xamarin Studio? I asked and lurked for days in the IRC channel. In a patronizing exchange with one of the developers, I was told that the Fsharp assembly needs to be embedded into the ios binary. Because of this, the trial limit is reached. An update will fix this later. Oh well. Nevermind. Once again, I'll shelve the idea of cross platform development.