I actually think this is not going to do much for Microsoft besides bringing some great talent. In general web software development is slowly moving away from .Net to Node. if this is a play for mobile, then it will be more enterprise focused as I don't see the regular App Store developers using Xamarin.
Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
271–280 of 405 posts
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desktop Linux was, is, and will probably always be a niche thing. And if the open source community is so great, as some of its proponents argue, let them build their own Skype. The non desktop pieces of Mono should be getting lots of improvements, though.
If the closed-source world is so great, let it build an equivalent to the Internet without any of the open pieces the Internet relies on.
You should take into consideration the many DARPA and public/private university dollars that laid the rails for the FOSS stuff to take off for the internet to evolve. Granted not closed-source, but directed-spending, funded research with lots of people involved, not spare-time hobby projects. FOSS nowadays is invisibly supported by large corporations. My first net experiences were on Genie's pay service, and BBS modem dialup to other people's homes and servers. You were truly free to do as you pleased, not worry about the interpretation of GPL, GPL3, etc...
I find the MS hatred compared to the Apple ecosystem here very unfair. I had a 386-based pen tablet, the NCR 3125, in 1994 (it came out in 1991, 19 years before the iPad, 2 years before the Newton). As a closed-source system running either PenOS or Windows 3.1(?), it had serial communication to other laptops via LapLink and a cool handwriting recognition system. The PenOS SDK was free to acquire and play and learn with. I believe Wikipedia incorrectly states the Apple Newton in 1993 was the first PDA to have handwriting recognition, but I guess if that's considering the NCR 3125 was not a PDA.
The point is that if you go back past the 5 years windows that is constantly touted in this article, Apple would be the 'evil' one, stealing from Xerox, BSD and others, and then encapsulating it into their walled-in, monolithic kingdom. They were largest market cap company until Google displace them this year (Alphabet), and it is definitely not FOSS, yet the masses go like Soma addicts to the spartan white, cloned stores for more with nary a protest. At least the MS kingdom has so many branches, you can choose to follow any one of them. MS Research is amazing. F#, F*, Typescript, the SMT solvers like Z3, Simon Peyton Jones of Haskell fame, is funded or paid by MS. I think MS is far too diverse of a company to pinpoint one aspect and call it 'evil'. It's the one that is wolf in lamb's clothing, Apple, that is truly to be feared ;)
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#273Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#274Does anyone know if most of Xamarin team located in Boston? The web sites has San Francisco as headquarters, but for some reason I always thought company is mostly in Boston.
Curios how much this acquisition increases Microsoft's dev center in Boston.
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the integration is done, we'll have Dotnet Core targeting Windows, OSX, Linux, Android and iOS. There will be frameworks for serverside and clientside applications. I think it can become the best alternative to the javascript world, which already can target all these, but needs all kinds of native support and is much less solid as a language.
If they could convince all browsers to host some version of the CLR so you could have IL and so (C#/VB.NET/F#) as a viable alternative to JavaScript then I would agree.
No need. The future is WebAssembly. We just need C#/F# compilers that generate this new IL.
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#276This is giant news for the .NET ecosystem. It means that MS is serious about their push into Mobile and Linux, and that .NET developers aren't going to have to work with Xamarin's ever-so-slightly-behind libraries anymore. It also means that MS now produces an IDE on Linux, which is a crazy change from 10 years ago.
> It means that MS is serious about their push into Mobile and Linux Mobile OK but Linux? Currently on the HN frontpage theres an article about how Skype for Linux hasn't been updated for years and "is unable to join calls": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11165568
Skype on Windows Phone is horrible. Updates come to iOS and Android, and only then WP.
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes no sense. It's pretty clear that .NET is Microsoft's future, and Xamarin extends the reach of .NET.
Look at Winforms, WPF and Silverlight. They are all .Net and all abandoned. I wouldn't bet my long term future on Xamarin.
Silverlight is abandoned, but Winforms (especially) and WPF are mature products; I use the latter two (as well as Xamarin for Mac) in my consulting business to make good profits each year, and don't see anything changing except for better in this respect.
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#278 heroic stuff for miguel
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft Yeah, that's why Windows 10 sends all your data to Microsoft by default and Windows updates no longer come with detailed explanations of what is in them. /s edit: judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. I guess all they had to do to win people over was make a few token contributions to the open-source community...
The Windows 10 privacy issues really do leave a bad taste, and I will be sticking to Windows 7/8.1 for as long as I can. There is a reason there are free upgrades to 10 being pushed so hard, and it's not because they are feeling nice. It seems like they are giving with one hand (open source to developers) and taking with the other (data from their unsuspecting users).
Do you also use only DuckDuckGo?
Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
or its embrace extend extinguish?
Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft. Disclaimer: I have been one of the ones pushing the last 5 years to make that statement true. ;)
With respect to the progress made by some MS divisions (and the people pushing for it), it seems not all of MS is keeping up. For example, this was on HN today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964
It's hard to trust that the currently good sides of MS will be allowed to stay good while other sides of MS are still behaving badly.