Microsoft Acquires Xamarin • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#231

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

yareally wrote: post #225

cm2187 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant as part of the main distribution

It's a very prominent installation option in Visual Studio 2015 that you can't miss. If you mean something else, please clarify.

I meant as a standard feature in visual studio, not a paid addon

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#232

Post by junto » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #186

iLoch wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React Native applications will be faster to develop thanks to React being inherently fast to develop. I would expect a React Native app to perform the same or better than Xamarin, due to React Native's asynchronous bridge approach. I don't have data to back this up, though.

JS apps being faster to develop than C# ? Maybe prototype, but .NET/C# are superior dev platforms in every way.

Didn't Xamarin compile the C# to native? Isn't this an apples to oranges comparison?

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#233

Post by gnoway » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

sirkneeland wrote: post #181

jenscow wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that with Skype, then Nokia.

Nokia was not successful (by any definition of the word) by the time Microsoft bought it.

That's true, they weren't.

Several years before that purchase, Stephen Elop (an MS executive) became CEO of Nokia. Within 6 months of his hire, Nokia signed an agreement with MS to sell Windows Phone devices; the classic Symbian OS and the Linux-based Meego - both of which had shipping hardware - were canceled in favor of exclusive focus on Windows Phone. Within the next few years, Nokia laid off over 20k people, their stock dropped by about 85%, and they even sold and then leased back their HQ in Finland. They were a lot less successful by that point, and a lot less expensive to purchase. Which Microsoft did.

There was some amount of controversy associated with the above.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#234

Post by moonchrome » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:19 PM UTC

junto wrote: post #232

moonchrome wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JS apps being faster to develop than C# ? Maybe prototype, but .NET/C# are superior dev platforms in every way.

Didn't Xamarin compile the C# to native? Isn't this an apples to oranges comparison?

I'm not talking about execution performance - I'm talking faster to develop for. It might be faster to get "hello world" running in JS but once you have a few people working on a project and need to do nontrivial stuff not provided by "JS framework X" (in this case React) you'll see the value of having sane language semantics, static typing, tools and a mature ecosystem (much higher quality than JS).

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#235

Post by marssaxman » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:21 PM UTC

devrelm wrote: post #61

niels_olson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or its embrace extend extinguish?

Why would MS want to extinguish a successful technology that they just bought?

Because Microsoft's decisions have always been driven as much by its byzantine internal politics as by any rational perspective on the market?

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#236

Post by moonchrome » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #207

moonchrome wrote: post #193

.NET now needs a solid compile-to-browser story - which is presumably coming with some future version of web assembly (initial version doesn't support GC or threads) I'm looking forward to the day where I can ditch C++ for portability - .NET really is an ideal replacement for most apps - you can write apps that don't stress the GC by using value types and can control memory layouts relatively well (unlike Java) and a…

> ".NET now needs a solid compile-to-browser story" You can compile .NET code to JavaScript using JSIL: http://jsil.org/

I've seen that but the showcase doesn't look very convincing compared to say emscripten.

Do you know about any bigger projects using JSIL ?

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#237

Post by beyti » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

I hope this means visual studio integration comes for free. As a paid indie developer for xamarin, being vs integration not included in indie license, was the worst thing about xamarin for me.

for the issue in uservoice 2700votes ATM:https://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/234640-xamarin-suggesti...

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#238

Post by michaelwww » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:24 PM UTC

forgotAgain wrote: post #98

niels_olson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or its embrace extend extinguish?

While I don't believe its a whole new Microsoft, the idea of embrace, extend, extinguish in this context is knee jerk nay-saying. What are they going to extinguish: iOS or Android?

It's curious to me how some people don't update their thinking. Microsoft is so far from being the dominate software behemoth that practiced EEE that's it's almost sad. The old Microsoft paid a price for that arrogant attitude of theirs that led them to make some bad decisions that got them to their reduced status today. I applaud efforts by the new crew to turn things around.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#239

Post by T-A » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:24 PM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #192

Huh, didn't that happen a few months ago? Or what am I confusing this with? I thought this was announced end of last year already, with Xamarin moving there products to Roslyn and Microsoft offering Xamarin's products for non-Windows platforms... or did my mind just make that up?

You may be thinking of http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Apr-09.html

and http://www.pcworld.com/article/2847032/xamarin-integrates-wi...

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#240

Post by jonsmit » Wed, Feb 24, 2016, 11:24 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #143

jonsmit wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can both be true. I think the valuation will be telling.

OK, here's another thing: Miguel has long advocated MS opening up their platform, and has welcomed every such move as it happened.

Companies have a long history of saying one thing privately and another thing publicly. If it were public then it wouldn't be a rumor.