404 Llama is the podcast to inspire all those lost developers in the world. We will be talking about: Xamarin.

Xamarin is an open source app platform from Microsoft for building modern & performant iOS and Android apps with C# and .NET. It was created by the engineers that created Mono.

Let’s dive deeper into the specifics of Xamarin and see what makes up this product’s unique.

The platform provides components that apply to all different types of apps. Additional frameworks, such as Xamarin, extend .NET with components for building specific types of apps.

With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT

Xamarin uses different languages to write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.

  • C# is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language.
  • F# is a cross-platform, open-source, functional programming language for .NET. It also includes object-oriented and imperative programming.
  • Visual Basic is an approachable language with a simple syntax for building type-safe, object-oriented apps

This open-source count with Cross-Platform. Whether you’re working in C#, F#, or Visual Basic, your code will run natively on any compatible OS. Different .NET implementations handle the heavy lifting for you:

  • .NET Core is a cross-platform .NET implementation for websites, servers, and console apps on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
  • .NET Framework supports websites, services, desktop apps, and more on Windows.
  • Xamarin is a .NET implementation for running apps on all the major mobile operating systems.

Something interesting from Xamarin is the feature Xamarin.Forms. It´is a popular mobile development framework that extends the .NET developer platform with tools and libraries for building mobile apps. It is currently one of the simplest ways to build cross-platform user interfaces that are compliant with the guidelines.

Xamarin.Forms is an open-source cross-platform framework from Microsoft for building iOS, Android, & Windows apps with .NET from a single shared codebase. Use Xamarin. Forms to build pages, layouts, and controls to build and design mobile apps from a single API that is highly extensible. Subclass any control to customize their behavior or define your own controls, layouts, pages, and cells to make your app pixel perfect.

We can say that Xamarin is the favorite of some developers because is simpler to use but the result looks more generic. It isn´t in the first options of tools more used to create apps by developers.

Xamarin Pros and cons

Pros:

Xamarin is one of the most effective options in Code Sharing, providing reusable code with native performance, UI and controls, all written in C# within the .NET framework.

Xamarin gets guaranteed continuous developer support, learning opportunities, stability, and performance. The fact that Xamarin is a part of Microsoft’s software development bundle puts it above many competitors.

The flexibility of C# and .NET. Xamarin’s main programming language is C#. Given the nature of C# and .NET, as well as Microsoft’s overall .NET for everything stand, a single development team should be able to easily switch between apps for various platforms by design.

Apps made with Xamarin utilize a range of native elements and technologies for highly optimized results.

Cons:

Current platform-specific limitations of Xamarin mobile development

It isn´t ideal for apps with the design too complex.

¡404 Llama is here to talk about topics like these! We invite you to listen to our 404 Llama Cast: