Xamarin

What is Xamarin ?

Julien Fiaffé Frameworks, Tools , ,

xamagonSeveral months ago I wrote an article to share my experience of a web developer moving to the world of mobile applications development. I am working in this field using the Xamarin technology. And you might have heard that Microsoft just acquired Xamarin, but I will not speak about this topic in this blog post, I do not have any opinion at the moment regarding this news.

When I introduce myself as a Xamarin developer, I often have to explain what it means even to other developers. And this is why I am creating this blog post, to introduce not only the technology but also the entire platform.

The technology

“Oh, I see, it’s like Cordova” is an answer I get from time to time, which is a start. Well, if you imply that Xamarin helps building cross-platform mobile applications, it is correct, but it is not really “like” Cordova.

What I like with Xamarin is the fact that it allows me to create native applications like an Android or iOS developer would do. The only difference is that I do not use the same programming language, instead of Java/Kotlin or Objective-C/Swift, I use C#. Like an Android developer I deal with activities, fragments, intents, AXML files and like an iOS developer I use storyboards, view controllers, UIView controls…

So, if the only difference is the programming language, what is the advantage of using Xamarin? Well, if you develop a mobile application on only one platform it might not be very interesting to use it except if you only know C#. But if you create an application on several platforms, it becomes relevant, because you can share code between Android, iOS and Windows Phone for instance. All of your apps use the same programming language. For example you can create a library with a API client for you application and use it on Android, iOS and Windows Phone: write it once and use it three times.

It is also possible to use Xamarin.Forms to share code between the User Interface (UI) for the three platforms I previously mentioned. But I will not go into the details because I have not used this technology at the moment. I can only tell you that it used a similar XAML format than the one available on the Windows platform.

The tools

“But how do I write C# with Xcode?” You cannot, to develop mobile applications with C#, Xamarin provides an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called Xamarin Studio which is available on Mac OS and Windows. You can also use a Visual Studio plugin to create Android and iOS apps from Windows, but keep in mind that you will still need a Mac for iPhone/iPad to be able to build and for the simulator.

Xamarin also provides their own Android simulator to test and debug android applications: the Xamarin Android Player, which is pretty good and available on Windows and Mac.

You can also monitor your applications with the Xamarin Profiler (still in preview at the moment) in order to track the memory allocations and to find potential memory leaks. It also allows to track time and to find bottlenecks. I used it to review the memory usage of an existing application and I was able to detect several anomalies easily, it is a very helpful tool.

The services

Xamarin not only provide tools to help us developing cross-platform applications, it also offers several services to improve the overall experience. Learning mobile apps development can be overwhelming at first, especially when you try to learn several platforms at the same time. The Xamarin University aims to help you in this matter, but it clearly targets organization and not individuals (it is expensive).

Xamarin also offers a cloud platform in order to test your applications on a lot of different devices: Xamarin Test Cloud. You can access more smartphones configurations than you will ever be able to get, you will be able to detect issues related to a specific OS version.

Once your applications is released you might want to monitor what is going on, is it stable? What are the errors my clients encountered? What the users do with the application? To answer these questions you can use the Xamarin Insights services. It will give you access to a dashboard allowing you to see a lot of useful information for your applications. But you will have to use the SDK and “plug it” inside your code base. So you have to plan it before your release if you want to use it, it is not something you just activate afterward.

Here is my introduction of the Xamarin platforms, I hope this helps you to gain a better understanding of what is Xamarin and what are the tools and services available with it. Xamarin is not just a technology it is also an entire ecosystem available to the developers who want to create native applications. You also have to keep in mind that some of these products might change in the future depending on the strategy of Microsoft for the entire Xamarin platform.

See you next time !

From web to mobile development

Julien Fiaffé General , ,

desktop-mobileI started my developer career as a web developer, using PHP. Soon after I switched to the .NET ecosystem to continue web development using C# and the ASP .NET MVC framework. I was creating web applications for my entire professional life until recently.

A few months ago I started working on mobile applications for Android and iOS, yet still with C# thanks to Xamarin. I am creating this blog post to share how I feel after this change.

Why this choice

You might wonder why I decided to switch from web development to mobile development. Because I wanted to work on something new in order to learn new skills, even if I still have a lot to learn regarding web programming.

I also think that mobile applications still have a bright future, sure there are already a lot of them on the existing stores. But new mobile devices are coming, like the smart-watches, and they will provide new opportunities for the developers. It is a good time, in my opinion, to learn how to create applications for mobile devices.

At my current company there was an opportunity to work on the new Android and iOS applications using my favorite language (C#) so why not take this chance.

A new paradigm

I knew that the way of programming would change since I already experienced mobile applications development with a project on Windows Phone. But still I was not prepared for what I have to do and I don’t think I could have been prepared.

Unlike a website an application has a very specific life cycle, you don’t just answer a request with a response. Almost everything I learned building web applications does not help me, the paradigm is entirely new.

Asynchronous programming is mandatory in this world, if everything runs on the User Interface (UI) thread the application will freeze. I always wanted to improve my skills in this area, looks like I found a good opportunity for this goal.

The separation of concern is also different, no more Model View Controller (MVC), now it is time to use the Model View ViewModel (MVVM) pattern. Even if I already used it (WPF and Windows Phone), it was not at the same level and I still have a lot to learn.

And of course you have the emulators to test the application, each time you want to test you have to build and deploy it, you cannot just refresh the page to see the changes. The feedback loop is long, several minutes most of the time, therefore debugging feels slow and debugging is important when starting with this technology.

Outside the comfort zone

I started working on the applications about two months ago and I still have a lot to learn. I need to deal with two ecosystems I know nothing about (Android and iOS), two frameworks I know nothing about (Xamarin and MvvmCross) and the business requirements which are not the easiest to meet. But at least I know how to use C#.

At the moment I struggle everyday, I have a lot to take into consideration, mostly some “How?” questions related to my new development environment. and also a lot of “What if?”: “What if the network is not available?”, “What if this solution is too slow?”, “How to provide the best experience for our clients?”…

Sometimes I cannot manage to produce anything for an entire day, and to be honest I feel worthless, I feel like I am a fraud… How can I consider myself has a professional software developer if I am not able to produce anything of value with my work?

Well, I guess this how it feels to step outside my comfort zone and I think I am in a ravine of the learning phase.

Learning Rate With Ravines
Learning Rate With Ravines

I will not give up

The thing is, that I am not the only one in this situation, I am not the only one to struggle. In the team we all have to deal with the same amount of learning, senior developers and junior ones.

When I take a look at the journey I began two months ago I realize that the route is still long but I also learned a lot, I am more familiar with the concepts of asynchronous programming and those of the MVVM pattern.

If I want to consider myself as a professional I will complete my journey and I will learn the skills I lack in order to produce the value our clients expect. Even if my work is painful from time to time, I have no regret, this is a massive opportunity to learn. I will succeed no matter how much time I need. And I hope to be able to share some Xamarin tips and tricks on this blog in the future.

See you next time!