Microsoft Acquires Xamarin • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#361

Post by martin-adams » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

bananaboy wrote: post #346

martin-adams wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if Microsoft want to attract developers to building for Windows (including phones and tablets), then adding first class support in Xamarin and reducing the licensing fees would be a huge win.

But you can build for Windows and Windows Phone right now for free in a better toolset than Xamarin. Visual Studio is much better.

I understood that one benefit of Xamarin is to build once and target many platforms. If you're faced with iOS and Android as the top platforms, including Windows for minimal cost without a complete rewrite is quite appealing.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#362

Post by coderguy123 » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

MS wanted to buy Xamarin way back. Xamarin held back. I remember some comment to this effect from Miguel. Now that .Net Core looks awesome and will work with LLVM backend. Wouldn't it just another step for MS to create what Xamarin's core product is. I think Xamarin realized this and gave in. their IPO dream shattered.

https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/400665313119055872

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#363

Post by user8341116 » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

>there are people out there that think VS is a good IDE >they don't just use vim or emacs >there are people out there that think Xamarin is a good technology >there are people out there that want to build mobile apps in a dead Microsoft design pattern (MVVM) I want off this wild ride.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#364

Post by dowrow » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:38 PM UTC

Hold on, are you telling me Xamarin was not a Microsoft product?

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#365

Post by a_guideline » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:46 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #314

enraged_camel wrote: post #92

Earlier 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...

> judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. Seriously, do we need to lower the content level of discussion here to "fanboy" camp accusations, it's not productive. Also, please review the guidelines: Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that y…

Please don't regurgitate guidelines that long term users know and deliberately ignore.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#366

Post by smanuel » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

What's interesting about Xamarin is that they are very local about OSS (Miguel) but what they did was not very "open sourcey" - obtaining a perpetual license for Mono and this way making sure that no one else can put Mono on Android / iOS. Ever.

And then charging 1000$ annually per developer, per platform.

On the other hand they've made something that developers love (from what I've heard, I've never used Xamarin's stuff personally) so they deserve the credits.

Congrats to the team.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#367

Post by devdenver » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

As a Xamarin subscriber, I'm guessing the future success of the merger (and product future) depends on:

1) addressing the price-point, 2) core clr integration, 3) retaining the top engineering talent at Xamarin, 4) addressing the iOS designer-specific issues

A couple notes:

For most LOB apps, I'm not convinced the code re-use is significant. The bulk of work is in the interface and navigation which is, necessarily, handled by coding android / ios specifics. Despite noble effort, the iOS design essentially needs to be done in xcode (point 4 above).

The build/release process is and (presumably) always will be locked behind the gates of technology's North Korea (Apple). They can throw a switch and restrict 3rd party runtimes if and when they choose.

For businesses in the 5-100 million range, writing an expense app in 2017, MSDN Xamarin should be a logical choice - but it has to be a platform with the reliability of .NET and a simple cross-platform designer. For app-centric startups, games, POS systems, etc. - it's probably a bad move.

For msft devs (and we are aging) it's win-win. The lure of C# gets you into mobile dev, and you will learn iOS and Android in the process.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#368

Post by ordbajsare » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

YAAAY Xamarin for free

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#369

Post by iLoch » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 3:48 PM UTC

ghuntley wrote: post #318

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.

Wrong, Xamarin has continuous/live coding. If you're doing the code -> compile -> deploy -> watch dance then you're doing it wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH90fVkXQx8

React Native supports this.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#370

Post by iLoch » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

kristianp wrote: post #259

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.

I think the reasoning behind this is that react allows you to almost instantly see the result of code changes in your app. With c# you have to wait minutes for each build and deployment cycle, which is painful. In terms of runtime performance, I guess in theory c# should be faster than javascript, but it depends on a lot of things, like the program being run, the speed of the mono runtime on the android or IOS platfo…

The reasoning is that with Xamarin you're still writing imperative code (AFAIK) whereas React is declarative. The result from a perspective of creating UI is that it's much faster and easier to create a UI in React. I don't think anyone would disagree with me here unless they haven't used React.