Xamarin Needs Swift

On March 18th, 2016, Microsoft’s acquisition of Xamarin officially closed. We love C# and we want every developer to be able to take advantage of the power of .NET in every app, on every device. Being part of Microsoft makes it possible for us to do some incredible things, and today we are announcing several …

Source: Xamarin for Everyone | Xamarin Blog

 

Free Download

As of today, Xamarin is now available for free. No more enterprise pricing. This now makes it a viable option for me as an independent iOS contractor to  be able to consider it as an option for client projects.

 

Xamarin Needs Swift

It would be an even better choice if it had a option for using Swift. But as Swift is open source, surely it won’t be long before there is a version of Xamarin which includes it. Or would this be a direction that Microsoft would be keen to avoid?

 

How much worse is C# than Swift?

Could I really consider going back to Microsoft technologies after being an Apple convert for so long? Maybe, I could if it would allow be to build products for Apple and Android and Mac.

Language comparisons show Swift and C# to have many similarities, certainly more than there would be with ObjectiveC.

 

Cross Platform Hell

But then again, Xamarin is still another layer that adds complexity as much as it tries to increase simplicity. It has its own issues and workarounds; and with so many pros and cons, it just feels like it’s still a world of pain for not much gain.

 

One To Watch

But already I’m not convinced on the cross platform dream:

  • Xamarin Forms are the easiest way to create a cross platform UI, but are very limited
  • There is a seperate iOS Designer and Android Designer for creating user interfaces
  • You really need an Android device to test on because the Android Simulator is so bad

I’ll try Xamarin Studio on personal project where it’s my own time I’m wasting.

 

 

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