Is Xamarin a viable option for mobile development?

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I need to develop for mobile and I was thinking of Xamarin as an option, and then I went to do some research and found out that:

  1. The Xamarin is paid, and the price is half salty for a cheap individual license.
  2. There is no way to develop the app 100% in C#, most say that 75% of the code will be written in C# and the rest in the native system language.
  3. To build iOS apps I’ll have to buy a Mac.

With these three points in mind I would like to know if Xamarin is a viable option?

c# android ios xamarin

  • I think if you know what Xamarin will do is good

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    And it has, in my view, how to develop 95% in C#

  • 1

    Xamarin now it’s free in your case

  • 1

    @rubStackOverflow If I’m not mistaken, follow the same terms of use of Visualstudio Community 2015.

1 answer

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I will not answer the part that asks for opinion because it is not objective of this site and should not be of none, since this does not solve anyone’s problem.

It’s obvious it’s viable, after all there’s a lot of people doing it.

Each one knows where his callus hurts and will see if the tool meets at all points. Can’t random people on the internet tell you what’s good for you.

I’ve never heard that you need to use another language to do other parts. As far as I know, you can do 100% in C#. Of course, there could be something very specific and rare that you can’t do well in C# because Xamarin is not yet 100%. I don’t think this makes it much less interesting. There are still gains in its use.

What can happen is you have to do some C# parts even if they are only useful for one of the platforms. This is common, but there are techniques to reduce this need.

And remember that almost every application has a part in the server too that can serve all platforms.

Of course it doesn’t work miracles. Doing it in native language can do a slightly better result. It depends on what you think is most important. Learn and use 3 different technologies and do the best possible or use one and do the necessary which is still very good.

You can compile for iOS on a virtual machine or use an external service. Own Xamarin offers a.

If programming in another language you will also need something like this.

Microsoft makes available the main product free of charge.

If the application is useful, serves for something and can marketed, monetized, etc., the cost of the licence is irrelevant. The gain from taking advantage of the bulk of the code can be so advantageous that the cost becomes derisory.

The only problem is when the application was fruit of voluntarism, And there’s a lot of this from the stores. There’s the same loss.

  • Your answer has been very helpful to me, yet I want to go a little deeper. This guy’s company does web marketing and the main one is creating virtual stores, and some customers ask for/need apps, mainly on Android. From what he told me, the applications in general should show a catalogue of the store’s products, and allow the purchase directly through the app or through browser redirection. That doesn’t sound so complicated, except for the integration with the store bank part. I wonder then if at least on Android is possible to do it 100% in C#. You can tell me?

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    This you will only discover by trying. No one will be able to answer you. Nor do you know yet what it will take.

  • Ezequiel, all that can be done for Android with Java is possible to be done in C#. Xamarin encapsulates all calls from all Android Apis, including the support Apis, which is the basis of how to make apps with Material Design. There is no scenario that C# doesn’t cover, and I speak from experience. It only makes sense to use something in Java when you already have a jar/War implemented or some dependency of some third party that doesn’t make sense to reimplement, then you can create a Binding project and pull/use this dependency.

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