If you are a mobile developer who is already working in the market or if you are a student trying to start his/her career in the mobile development field and someone asks you to learn Xamarin, then a question arises in your mind: Why Xamarin?
This article will answer the following questions.
- What is Xamarin?
- Why choose Xamarin as your professional career?
- What is the future of Xamarin?
What is Xamarin?
Background
Xamarin is a software company founded on May 16, 2011 and Microsoft signed an agreement to acquire Xamarin on Feb. 24 2016.
Name
The name Xamarin comes from the name of a Tamarin Monkey, and replaces the leading T with an X.
Defining Xamarin
Xamarin is an Application development platform, which lets you build Applications for many platforms with a single shared code base.
Tools
You can use Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Windows or Mac for development.
Brief Introduction
By using Xamarin, we can develop mobile Applications, which work on multiple mobile operating systems i.e. Android, iOS and Windows. Xamarin has two main approaches, where one is a Shared UI and other is a Separate UI. Both are used to develop an Application but in a shared UI; almost all of your code is shared in all the platforms, while in a Separate UI; only Business logic is shared, while you have to make separate user interfaces for all the platforms, as shown below.
![Xamarin]()
Now, let's discuss both these approaches.
Separate UI
If you are working with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android, then you are using a separate UI approach. In this approach, you can develop iOS and Android apps separately with shared business logic. This means all your business logic classes are in C# and you can easily reuse your logic from one developed Application to another Application but you have to design their UI separately.
What about windows OS?
Windows Application already supports C# for their development. Due to this Xamarin gives xamarin.android and xamarin.ios in addition to Universal Window apps, which are already made by C#.
Shared UI
Xamarin.Forms works on shared UI approach. In this approach, approximately all your code is shared; while both business login and UI are shared.
Language
XAML is used for designing UI and C# is used to code its logic.
Why to choose Xamarin as your professional career?
If you are a mobile app developer, then you will be an Android developer, Windows developer or an iOS app developer or if you are about to start your career in the mobile development field, then you have to choose the platform; you are working in the near future. In these situations, you are going to target a single platform. You have to choose your development platform, which is one of the most difficult tasks.
![xamarin]()
Thus, are you going to choose one of these platforms for development? Or do you want to become a GURU in mobile app development by targeting all these Applications by writing a single code?
This seems to be funny if you are not familiar with Xamarin forms
Let’s have a quick look at the major benefits of Xamarin forms.
If you want to learn any of the single native mobile app development platforms, then this might be helpful to you.
| iOS | ANDROID |
WINDOWS |
Tool | XCode | Android Studio | Visual Studio |
Language | Swift/Objective C | Java | C# |
Framework | IOS Frameworks | Android SDK/JAVA SDK | .NET Library |
If you want to target all these platforms, then you don’t have to learn all of these languages, tools and frameworks but Xamarin forms alone are enough to do this task.
You only need to learn XAML and C# for this.
Performance
Xamarin apps are fully native, so in Xamarin; you can enjoy fully native performance with the shared code.
Another question arises here which is how Xamarin gives native performance without using native development tools and language?
Xamarin gives 100% Android and iOS native APIs coverage with the benefit of .NET APIs. Due to this Xamarin provides native performance with a native look and feel of your mobile Application.
How does Xamarin help you, if you are running a software house or about to start your software house?
If you are running a software house and developing mobile apps, then Xamarin is the best option for you as you are separately paying to Android, iOS and Windows developer. Now, you only have to pay Xamarin developer to do this task.
Xamarin helps you in the ways given below.
- Xamarin forms reduce your development cost.
- It reduces bigger mobile development team to few Xamarin developers
- Less time is required to develop the apps.
- Native performance.
- Shared code.
- Native look and feel.
- Android, iOS and Windows apps
What is the future of Xamarin?
Xamarin has a good future especially after Microsoft acquired it. Now, it is a cross-platform Microsoft product. Xamarin provides a single platform to create apps of different OS like ioS, Android and Windows.
Xamarin's future is measured by the points given below.
- Microsoft support.
- Xamarin is a free product.
- Lower cost.
- Native apps.
- All the resources are free and effective.
- Companies will not hire new mobile developers for an iOS and Android will depend on their .NET and C# developers.