Pros and Cons of Xamarin Development

so you want to build an app well there's always that question iOS or Android you probably want to cover them both simultaneously and maybe even Windows devices for good measure but creating so many different apps is expensive time-consuming and it takes a lot of engineering effort unless you're using xamarin xamarin is a whole ecosystem of tools that helps you create apps for all platforms with just one technology stack c-sharp language running on dotnet framework xamarin apps while created for different operating systems share all business logic database access and network communication only user interfaces designed separately to maintain the native look and feel of each platform here's why you should consider xamarin when building your app first c-sharp dotnet and visual studio with installed xamarin these are the only three components required to create apps for all operating systems there are emulators available for all mobile platforms but if you're a Mac fan feel free to create iPhone apps on your machine as well you also have several options for debugging weather from desktop emulator or directly on a device xamarin apps also boast an unmatched performance level compared to hybrid or other cross-platform development tools for instance image loading and native apps is only 14% faster than using xamarin and even a more significant difference in image saving speed is simply unrecognizable by a mere human let's also not forget that different operating systems have elements that drastically distinguish them from each other and obviously you want to fit in for an Android user it's natural to use the menu tabs on top of the screen while iOS users enjoy different patterns xamarin allows you to achieve this native look and feel by two methods the easier quicker and more contained way is using xamarin forms xamarin forms is a library of templates that helps you use standard interface elements and reach 100% of that long for oft promised code reuse if you want more creative freedom use xamarin iOS and an Android built-in tools for manual customization and finally xamarin is open-source meaning free it comes gratis with Microsoft's development environment Visual Studio this means if you've already bought and used that tool you can start experimenting with xamarin and its tools right away create Mac apps using xamarin Mac run automated testing with xamarin test cloud even make use of analytics using xamarin insights but now the rest of the zamarons story the downside are there pitfalls yes let's talk about them you already know that if you're building an app with heavy UI you'll have to manually rewrite some parts of platform-specific code using the required language swift or Objective C on iOS and Kotlin or Java for Android of course xamarin will update your business logic and xamarin forms elements automatically but there's always a delayed reaction to a new platform version imagine if a new version of Android dropped today you'd have to wait a few days before the xamarin team updates the tools so you can update your app finally the population of xamarin professionals in the labor pool is still quite low about 10% of all members of the mobile development community are xamarin developers you'll find way more developers working exclusively with iOS or Android than people versed in xamarin but don't give up the xamarin community is growing strong with the abundance of tutorials and the official online xamarin university NEC sharp dotnet engineer can acquire the needed skills to build cross-platform apps considering all that let's quickly recap under what circumstances you should consider xamarin to be honest building games complex animations or custom user experiences pointless with xamarin yes you get the code reuse but you still have to spend a lot of time wiring UI to each platform so you lose the main benefit xamarin provides the right once run anywhere approach if you've got tight deadlines you can skip a lot of development stages with xamarin without heavy UI cuss you can quickly write one code share it across platforms and have a whole lineup of apps ready for download in less than six months not many small and midsize businesses have separate development teams for both iOS and Android with xamarin you can enter the market on low budget with a small team of in-house or outsourced engineers for support xamarin is one of the tools that make app development more accessible to businesses of course there's still a gap when we're talking about graphics packed apps but xamarin takes mobile first out of the concept arena and into reality for many companies [Music]

Channel: AltexSoft

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Rating: 4.9296703 out of 5

Keywords: #xamarin, MobileDevelopment

Id: Yy29uRKpzhY

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 29 2018