41–50 of 68 posts
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We just did a webinar about Xamarin Studio last week in case you're interested http://xamarin.wistia.com/medias/z797ghqlps
Great! Can I add it to the post?
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Thanks! I wasn't aware of that announcement. Last month's blog post says: "If you have a RubyMotion app for iOS or OS X and want to port it to Android, you can even share some of the code." ( http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/87048665656/rubymotion-3-0-s... ) I haven't used Ruby Motion myself -- do you know how much of the code can be reused excluding platform-specific UI stuff? There's a significant difference between…
From the blog post, that seems like a rather perilous approach.. what are the chances they get all the builtin Ruby stuff to work the same way despite basing it on Java equivalents?
It amazes me that the constant complaint on here is the price. Seriously folks, if you are a professional developer (by that I mean your primary ability to earn money for you and your family is the development of software) then the cost of a Xamarin license should be looked at as a factor of time. How much time will it save you? Lets imagine your current project to build an iOS and Android app of identical functional…
1. If I'm bootstrapping a startup, That $2000 is easily at least 1 entire year of web hosting, or a new MacBook, or a couple of new servers. Bootstrapping has thin enough margains that $2000 is a large amount of money and runway for a young company and that's only for one dev. Have two dev's? that's even more of your runway gone. $4000 could sustain two devs for two months if they are really cheap and try hard. Xamarin is unlikely to save you that two months.
2. If I'm developing an indie game there are A HUGE amount of cheaper better options available. Unity, Unreal, Cry Tech, cocos2D/3D, or Apportable. All cheaper and better for game dev.
3. If I'm learning how to develop mobile apps with the hope of obtaining a full time job. Then Xamarin job posts are fairly rare, so spending even $600 to learn the dev process and then still not have the skills to get a full time position is a losing value equation.
4. There are cheaper tools out there, like Ruby Motion or Apportable.
I think the Xamarin guys are brilliant and made a great product but I think the value is very limited to existing Dot Net or independent app developers. Yes it makes a lot of sense for those groups but there are a ton of others that the price is a real barrier to entry.
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It amazes me that you've completely missed out on some of the reasons for people complaining about the cost. My comment is one you're railing against and I think you're off base. Even going by your factor of time, I have to bet $1,000 that this product will be worth both that money and the time that I have to put into learning and dealing with it. There's no VS trail (as far as I know). So other than going off of blo…
Being honest, there will be very little learning curve going from VS to Xamarin Studio. They tried to make that switch as painless as possible. You are right, there is a factor of learning that needs to be baked into your consideration but there comes a point where you put a little trust in people who came before you and tell you 'I have done this, I have been where you are - follow me and you will be fine'. On the f…
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Maybe the tacit assumption here is that I'm doing development for Android and iOS; I'm currently interested in neither, although I do think F# is a compelling language and I'd love to be able to advocate for it at my workplace. However, given the fact that we're a Linux shop, Xamarin has made it really hard to push for Mono/F# as an alternative to Scala.
Another thing that colors my perspective - I have been on my own for 15 years. I don't have to consider the company, legacy or other devs in the shop. It is me, whom I choose to sub-contract to and what jobs I choose to take on. There is a level of freedom in that I often take for granted.
It amazes me that the constant complaint on here is the price. Seriously folks, if you are a professional developer (by that I mean your primary ability to earn money for you and your family is the development of software) then the cost of a Xamarin license should be looked at as a factor of time. How much time will it save you? Lets imagine your current project to build an iOS and Android app of identical functional…
I think you are missing the point here so I'll layout the three reasons price is a big deal to some (I'm basing my arguments on the ($1000 per platform price because that is the first place I think it's really worth while): 1. If I'm bootstrapping a startup, That $2000 is easily at least 1 entire year of web hosting, or a new MacBook, or a couple of new servers. Bootstrapping has thin enough margains that $2000 is a…
There are so many factual errors and outdated assumptions in your thread that i wont take the time to do a writeup. To put it short: - You're wrong. - Given the current speed of Javascript on mobile, Xamarin is just a job creation tool for unemployed .NET/WPF Developers. - You cannnot reuse run-of-the-mill web devs for hybrid app development. - Good web developers are just as expensive as good native devs. - Hybrid a…
It's a common misconception that phonegap and cordova don't have the same access to native APIs. They do, but they are limited by what plugins are available, and your ability or interest to build ones to fill the "gap." For example, I wrote a plugin recently to send low-level broadcast UDP packets on Android and iOS through Cordova. The plugin API is just a bridge and sets up a calling convention for Javascript-to-na…
Take a look at Ionic Framework if you think PhoneGap/Cordova can't provide a native look and feel.
There are so many factual errors and outdated assumptions in your thread that i wont take the time to do a writeup. To put it short: - You're wrong. - Given the current speed of Javascript on mobile, Xamarin is just a job creation tool for unemployed .NET/WPF Developers. - You cannnot reuse run-of-the-mill web devs for hybrid app development. - Good web developers are just as expensive as good native devs. - Hybrid a…
First of all, it's tricky. It took our team a long time to get the rhythm of simultaneous Android/iOS development. For a long time every single push broke something.
Some annoyances:
Visual studio project files don't merge. You need a special xml aware merge tool to do this. Even then, its a pain in the ass.
It can be very tricky to abstract the differences between Droid and iOS if you're interacting with the OS a lot.
Some things to know:
Just because you're in C# land, doesn't mean your API is. You're going to spend a lot of time implementing stuff in C# that feels wrong because your API is ObjC/Java.
Sometimes there isn't a good mapping between NS data types between the APIs.
You're going to spend a LOT of time in the iOS / Droid docs, so you'd better be comfortable with ObjC / Java.
Overall I'm happy with the experience.