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Major upgrades to Xamarin’s platform: Async is here
- vailripper 13y agoI'm curious about Xamarin - has anyone used it, in addition to something like Phonegap / Appcelerator? How does it compare?
- kevingadd 13y agoPhoneGap and Appcelerator are for building apps in HTML/CSS/JS. Xamarin lets you write apps in C# (statically compiled to native code, in the case of iOS, last I checked) that interact directly with native OS APIs.
- yulaow 13y agoalso phonegap is free, while xamarin.android and xamarin.ios have high license costs for developer and platform https://store.xamarin.com/ https://store.xamarin.com/
- jimmcslim 13y agoNot the whole story... Xamarin have a Starter Edition that is free for both platforms; admittedly with limitations (maximum app size, no linking with 3rd party code other than Xamarin provided assemblies and the iOS SDK). Within those limitation, you can publish to the App Store with the Starter Edition (obviously you need a Mac as well for iOS). The Indie Edition drops both of those limitations for USD299 per annum, which is reasonably affordable from my perspective. (Disclaimer: I have paid for the Business Edition; USD999 per annum, which adds the ability to use Visual Studio and a few other things).
- vailripper 13y agoThat's 300 dollars per platform right? So 600 dollars if I wanted to create an android / ios app?
- yulaow 13y agoMore or less you get a 10% discount on the total price if you buy multiple licences at the same time You can see all here: https://store.xamarin.com/#purchase https://store.xamarin.com/#purchase
- benologist 13y agoThe app size limit is so restrictive their own demos won't even compile. It's a tremendous shame because they automatically exclude so many people.
- rodrigokumpera 13y agoThe cheapest PhoneGap offering with support will cost you at least $249/year. And for that much you get No Guarantee support, which sounds quite odd.
- yulaow 13y agoAs i see in the link above the support for xamarin is only in the business package so it starts at $999/year (please correct me if i am wrong). Anyway i was not talking about the support option, but about the chance of deploy a full serious multios app. With phonegap you have that for free, with xamarin you have to pay (299*2) minus discount of 10%. Just this.
- camus 13y agowrong appcelerator doesnt use CSS/HTML , just javascript. The UI is native with appcelerator.
- everettForth 13y agoDisclaimer, I know the Xamarin founders. That being said, I haven't used Xamarin, but I was impressed to see that rdio uses it. Previously, I had assumed that the point of Xamarin was a way for C# developers to make iphone apps. However, my understanding was that rdio uses it so they can reuse the same C# code across their iPhone and Android apps. Rdio raised $17M in funding and could easily hire native iOS developers if they wanted to. The net result is that rdio is actually one of the better iphone apps that I use, and I was really surprised to learn that it wasn't written in objective-C.
- UK-AL 13y agoTop .net devs are paid more than iOS devs. Because they are paid high salaries by banks and corporations. Mid tier developers not so much.
- Renaud 13y agoXamarin tools are built around the idea that the core of every application tend to be platform independent and so could be written in C# (or F#). This gets compiled into native code on some platforms (iOS). Their approach is to build native apps that use the native UI design tools, so for each platform, you have to re-design its UI to follow the UI paradigms of that particular platform. The result is still compelling: the UI is native, the underlying code is common on all platforms, you get to use 100% of your platform technical capabilities, the app runs as fast as native apps, you get the power of .Net development tools (even Visual Studio if you want) and all the cool features of C# 5.0 (and F#) to build your apps. Xamarin, through Mono and its mobile development tools is actually building what Microsoft promised but never really delivered: platform independence for .Net (OS/X, iOS, Windows, WinRT, Android, Linux).
- yapcguy 13y agoAre Xamarin tools really the holy grail of cross-platform app development? What are the hidden gotchas? What about MonoDevelop for the desktop? The Windows and Mac download packages are at v4 but Linux at v2.6. Are Xamarin slowly abandoning use of GTK# ? Is this because of GTK 2 v 3 fragmentation? Should we be supporting C++ and QT given that QT now supports iOS and Android? Given that some developers are scared of C++ what about C# / F# with QT QML? Are there any bindings which are maintained and tracking QT updates?
- rodrigokumpera 13y agoXamarin doesn't provide its products on Linux. But it doesn't mean MonoDevelop doesn't work there. The latest versions run on it, it's just a matter that we don't have the manpower to keep up with packaging. On GTK+ 2, it's still the main toolkit used by the IDE, but on windows/mac some bits of the native toolkits are used to improve the user experience. QT on iOS and Android means you get non-native UIX. So why bother with C++? Disclaimer: I work for Xamarin.
- ghuntley 13y agodisclaimer: using Xamarin, using MvvmCross and went to Evolve 2013. - Write your core business logic API once (in a Portable Class Library) using the ModelView ViewModel pattern. - Design native user interfaces for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows Phone 7.x, Windows Phone 8.x, Windows Store (RT and Desktop) and Windows WPF. - Bind your user interfaces against the core business logic. Multiple platforms, native user interface designed for each platform, sharing one core business library, maximum code reuse (90%+!), using either C# or F# with async/await/linq/lambdas/anonymous types, etc. You can use Visual Studio or MonoDevelop. Rewriting your business logic multiple times over in different languages to target multiple platforms does not make sense. I'm curious why would anyone not use Xamarin? Evolve 2013 Videos: http://xamarin.com/evolve/2013 http://xamarin.com/evolve/2013 Recommended ModelView ViewModel Frameworks: https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross or http://www.reactiveui.net/ http://www.reactiveui.net/
- mathgladiator 13y agoI'm using it, and I love it. I actually am getting some very good performance on Android since the language is actually good (related: http://jeffrey.io/damn-garbage-collection http://jeffrey.io/damn-garbage-collection)
- CodeCube 13y agoAhhh yes! async was really the missing piece for mobile apps, who are so often stuck waiting for something to happen (disk IO, network IO, the user to take a picture). There are obviously ways to deal with this on every platform ... but async just makes it nice :)
- pdappollonio 13y agoI was wondering if there are other alternatives out there like Xamarin. I've used their Mono for Android software and was good but sadly, the prices went too high this time so if you want to use Visual Studio you need to add a good amount of money to make it true. :(
- mrinterweb 13y agoTitanium would be the closest alternative that I can think of. Titanium allows for apps to be be developed using JavasScript and then compile natively for Android, iOS, and others.
- camus 13y agothey dont compile JS natively. Your code is still in javascript but get executed in a native shell, instead of using a web view , but there is no js compilation into native code.
- mrinterweb 13y agoThanks. I didn't realize that it was still running interpreting the javascript after a project was built for a device that made calls to native interfaces. My guess is that it would be close to native performance. I was under the impression that Titanium would compile to java bytecode for android and likewise for iOS, but I was wrong.
- Skinney 13y agoTitanium, last I checked also do not support all the native API's like Xamarin does. Six months ago I did not see support for the ActionBar for Android apps. Even though the Titanium API is supposed to work cross platform, usually there are functions or settings that only works on either Android or iOS. It's messy in my oppinion, but it is a lot cheaper.
- solomatov 13y agoUnfortunately, adoption of this great technology is limited by crippleware license. You have to pay even for just developing applications. Of course, you can use starter edition, but it's useless because of size limit. The same story is repeated again and again. Tool vendors think more about profits than about growth and adoption. Sun limited usage of server side Java on Linux which allowed PHP to occupy linux server side niche. When it understood that it made a mistake, it was too late. I am afraid, we will be developing mobile applications in JS in several years' time.
- bigdubs 13y agoIt's pretty ironic that Mono was a reaction to MSFT's licensing issues. Now we'll need the Mono equivalent for the Xamarin iOS api's etc. Mono-ception.
- solomatov 13y agoThey are more concerned about making money like MSFT than making world a better place.
- mahmud 13y agoAnd there is nothing wrong with that. Xamarin staff have given the world so much; I'd say billion+ dollar industry was built on the back of their labor. About time Miguel et al profited.
- solomatov 13y agoI agree that it's nothing wrong in making money. All the work should be paid. However, their license makes their technology a niche product, when it could have been the main way mobile applications are developed.
- mathgladiator 13y ago> could have been the main way mobile applications are developed is this so bad? I see at a competitive advantage to use their platform. I'd rather ship 1.0 and 2.0 quickly to learn from customers than focus on the one true way to build mobile applications.
- frou_dh 13y agoAs someone not familiar with the async/await stuff, I just looked up the official MS documentation and found the explanation pretty obtuse. As much as I can tell, it's a way to facilitate, umm, "chained futures", and by the way it's suddenly OK for a type returned to kind-of-but-not-really match the method signature. I'm sure it's powerful but it doesn't come across as obviously amazing like LINQ did.
- ufo 13y agoI don't know the specifics in this article but usually the analogy I would give is that async/await is to asynchronous programming as yield/generators are to writing iterators. When you can use yield you can use regular control flow like branches, for loops, etc to write iterators in a straightforward manner. If you can't use yield you instead end up needing to represent all that implicit control flow using explicit stacks and things like that. Similarly, async/await let you write asynchronous code very similarly to how you would write a synchronous version of the same thing.