What advice do you have for others considering Xamarin Platform?

If you have to build mobile apps using Xamarin Platform, you either build for Android or iOS. There are two ways to build an app. You can develop and have one codebase for, say, Android and another codebase for iOS if you are using a native stack, which is Kotlin for Android and Swift for iOS. This means you need to maintain, as an organization, two teams and two separate codebases. There are certain solutions that enable you to target both platforms with a single codebase, and these are called cross-platform or hybrid mobile development. Xamarin Platform is among these solutions, along with React Native and Flutter, and previously solutions such as PhoneGap and Ionic. Right now it is mostly React Native and Flutter followed by Xamarin Platform. Xamarin Platform was quite popular because it sits well inside the .NET ecosystem. All .NET developers would feel right at home in Xamarin Platform because it uses C# and the .NET ecosystem to build cross-platform apps for iOS and Android. Xamarin Platform has been decommissioned since approximately two years ago and succeeded by something called Maui.NET. Many organizations continue to use it because they have not migrated or are probably in the process of migrating. Our organization has not migrated to Maui.NET, so we still continue to have multiple apps that run on Xamarin Platform Forms. Since it is no longer supported, you cannot use the latest Android and iOS SDKs. It is more suited for in-house, enterprise-use cases than customer-facing use cases because if you are going to build the app, whenever you publish it on Xamarin Platform App Store or Google Play, they ask you to use their latest SDKs and their latest libraries. Given that Xamarin Platform has been discontinued, it is no longer compatible with the latest libraries and SDKs released by Apple and Google. You cannot use Xamarin Platform to release public-facing apps that are downloaded on Xamarin Platform Apple App Store or Google Play Store by customers and users, but they continue to be used in a closed enterprise environment where no such restrictions apply. You can still build on top of and add features to existing apps that were already built using Xamarin Platform Forms and continue to distribute them internally to your corporate organizational users because they do not need to be published to Xamarin Platform App Store or Google Play Store. That is the reason why Xamarin Platform still continues to be popular, especially amongst institutional and enterprise users, still having enterprise usage, but not so much in the external, customer-facing ecosystem. UI design with Xamarin Platform usually works in any organization where you have UI designers who provide developers with wireframes, usually using software such as Figma. We use Figma in our organization. It is a developer's job to translate those wireframes into apps and app screens using something called XAML, which is like HTML for browsers. Xamarin Platform Forms uses something called XAML to render screens, and that gets converted into the platform-specific UI elements. XAML is an abstraction and then it gets translated into an Android UI element or an iOS UI element depending on where it is being run and deployed. The advantage of Xamarin Platform is that you just write a single codebase using XAML for the UI design, and under the hood, Xamarin Platform translates your code into the native code supported by either Android or iOS. There are some project templates that you get to choose when you first create a project, such as a tabbed view or a collection view, or an app that has a tab layout or one that has a hamburger menu. Xamarin Platform does not have too many templates. If you look at Flutter, it offers widgets and has an extensive library of widgets, so when you are looking at a wireframe, you would inevitably find a widget that closely matches what you need. In Xamarin Platform, you may have to search and find something that matches your wireframes, but it is unlikely you will find something if the design is unique to your organizational requirements. Most organizations build their own libraries and UI elements on top of Xamarin Platform, and all apps usually have a design language. For example, all our apps in our organization have a common theme, layout, fonts, and colors. We have common UI elements built in Xamarin Platform that we can reuse for new requirements or for enhancing existing features. However, the ecosystem is not as rich as that of Flutter or even React Native. Xamarin Platform did have extensive options but is no longer used, and even the documentation is not supported anymore. If you go to the URL developer.xamarin.com, you would see a warning that states this documentation is no longer supported. Microsoft is encouraging developers to move away from Xamarin Platform and adopt its successor, which is Maui. Xamarin Platform has been in the industry since around 2013 or 2012, but I do not remember the exact date when it was first released. Xamarin Platform used to be a separate organization before Microsoft's acquisition. My overall rating for Xamarin Platform is 6 out of 10.

While I recommend Xamarin Platform, I suggest checking the library support needed for first-party libraries to avoid future challenges. I rate the overall solution a six out of ten.

The platform is easy to learn as many tutorials are available on YouTube. Additionally, many Microsoft MVPs offer demos and resources that simplify the learning process. When deciding on a mobile application development framework, it's essential to consider your specific requirements. Evaluate the pros and cons of each available option, including alternatives. The choice ultimately depends on how well the technology aligns with your project needs and your comfort level with learning and adapting to new tools. I rate it a 9 out of 10.

If you're new to Xamarin, I'd recommend starting with a solid foundation in C#. Microsoft provides extensive documentation on Xamarin, and there are many helpful tutorials on YouTube. Focus on building small sample applications to get the hang of it. Even I started that way! Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. Because when there are some problems when I have to create some APKs or APIs, it's a large size. Also, I had to deduct some marks for its performance. So, a little bit as compared to React Native applications or any native applications, it is quite slow.

Xamarin comes in various flavors. At the technical level, we use something called Xamarin.Forms, which is the most popular flavor of Xamarin. You also have some older flavors like Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS. Those are specifically targeted for native app development, whereas Xamarin.Forms are more for cross-platform app development, where you can write code once, and it will run on all supported platforms like Android and iOS. However, Xamarin will be "decommissioned," though that's probably not the right word because Microsoft has introduced something called MAUI as a successor to Xamarin.Forms. Microsoft acquired Xamarin, built on top of it, and introduced many features after they acquired Xamarin. Xamarin has some flaws, but since it's been there for eight to nine years, there are known workarounds for existing issues found through the developer community. On the contrary, MAUI is a new product full of bugs because it was introduced very early. It's an extremely buggy solution introduced by Microsoft, which is why, if you do some research, you will discover that there are currently no enterprise solutions that use MAUI. Microsoft is then going to lose its limited foothold. Even though MAUI was introduced more than a year ago, there has been no large-scale adoption by any enterprise. Microsoft is kind of forcing all these companies to move from Xamarin to MAUI, but none of them are willing to do that because it's such a poor product, including my organization. However, the first two or three iterations of Microsoft's products were full of bugs before they radically overhauled their solutions. MAUI is useful for small hobby projects or individual developers who want to play around with mobile development. Many of these organizations will now move to other solutions like React Native, an open-source solution from Facebook, or Flutter from Google. Likewise, they might choose native solutions like Android Studio with Kotlin or iOS with Xcode. Xamarin has a very limited market share in the mobile development space. There are hardly any job openings for Xamarin. On some sites, there would be fewer than 50 job openings for Xamarin. By contrast, with React Native, you would find the number of openings for it to be much more than Xamarin. The same goes even if you search for something like iOS or Android. This suggests that Xamarin is used by a very small percentage of enterprise clients. We use App Center when deploying the solution, and it automates deployment. Likewise, If you want to update the version of the app on the Apple Store or Google Play, you just have to trigger a build on App Center, and then it takes care of building and deploying the app to the App Store or Google Play. I rate Xamarin a five out of five. The way I see it right now is that there are three big players in the market for cross-platform development. We have Flutter offered by Google, React Native offered by Facebook, and Xamarin offered by Microsoft. If React Native would be eight in popularity and adoption, Xamarin would be maybe five point five or five out of ten. Flutter is a relatively new technology, but it's picking up very rapidly. It has already surpassed Xamarin or will surpass it very soon. Xamarin will retire in a year or so, and MAUI is in bad shape. I expect Flutter and React Native to be the two most popular technologies for cross-platform mobile development.

I recommend other users to use it, like the native integration or native development or native features. We use the SAP so they have to consider which kind of integration they should adapt to with SAP. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

Until relatively recently, I used this solution all day, every day, but at this stage it would not be my go-to choice and I'd now prefer Flutter or React Native. If you're starting something new and you have experience with .NET, and are already in the environment of the ecosystem, then I would say that you could potentially use Xamarin. But if you are coming from a JS perspective, then I would recommend Flutter. If you're production ready, go with Flutter or React Native. The solution has served me well and I rate it eight out of 10.

I would recommend that anyone that is considering implementing Xamarin into their organization first learn all about the product. You can learn directly via Microsoft videos. After, you can learn about the languages Xamarin uses. Once you have developed your applications by yourself, and you have learned about the fundamental of Xamarin.Forms, then you can start the practicalities of a test project. Then you can start your project, but it takes some time to learn. Overall, I would rate Xamarin Platform a nine out of ten.

This is a good platform. I rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. I rate it a nine because it is a great framework tool for them to develop mobile apps within .NET., and only minimal XAML knowledge is required. If they don't have the XAML knowledge, the developer can design within C#. In addition, the community in Xamarin Platform is big, and many developers and program managers from Microsoft Azure. They inform of tips and tricks whenever new information is available about Xamarin on YouTube, Twitter, or websites. As a result, all developers contribute to design challenges. We have so many developer teams for many frameworks and languages. Xamarin Platform is suitable for the developer who knows the C#, .NET framework and is familiar with XAML. They can easily do mobile app development in Xamarin.Forms. Regarding additional features, they have already introduced MAUI .NET 6.0, and they are upgrading these Xamarin.Forms to MAUI. I think they are supporting Xamarin.Forms next year, and after that, all the applications will move to .NET MAUI. I believe they have already introduced many features in .NET MAUI and are working on other features to introduce in .NET 7.0 and .NET 8.0. Every quarter, the .NET products release new features and fix bugs.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

My advice to others is to look into tutorials, such as on YouTube. There are a lot of resources on YouTube. Additionally, there is a lot of documentation within Microsoft that's good. I rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

I would tell people considering this solution that there's a lot of training available. There's a lot of documentation on Microsoft's website and apps for getting started. Places like Pluralsight also have a lot of video training. I would recommend downloading the IDE and going through some of the Microsoft tutorials initially, and then jumping into Pluralsight to find some deeper training. I would rate this solution pretty high. I would give it a nine out of ten. I've never had the Xamarin platform cause a project to fail. In other words, I've been successful in every project where we've tried to apply it and, except for external problems with the requirements or things like that, I've never run into any technical problem that I couldn't solve with Xamarin. The apps that you can produce can be very professional depending on how much time you put in and you can dramatically reduce the amount of code you have to write to support two platforms.

I would advise others to use the Xamarin Platform because it's the technology that is most stable in the market. There is always support from Microsoft and it is updated often. I rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

When someone's building something, they want the capability to do so across the platform; initially, there was a goal to build something for iOS, something for Windows, and something for Android. The first thing they dropped was the Android approach. They ended up keeping the iPad and Windows. You write the code once and it generates in both, or in multiple outputs. In our situation, we were supporting it on the iPad — 95% of the people used one. A very select few people used Microsoft Surface. It's a tremendous effort to keep both going, although that's the whole purpose of having Xamarin. It's a great concept. I think it worked well. The concept of doing it is still not perfect. When we generated some code on the iPad, we would get fewer bugs, and with Surface Pro, we would get more bugs. The same code was pushing a bug on Surface Pro, but not on the iPad. That's basically a fact of maturity over their capabilities. From a business point of view, it didn't make sense for the use case that we had — it was a huge cost for a few users. In many situations, Xamarin has a purpose. There are good reasons to build it once and have it work on both platforms. Not from a technical point of view, but from the business side, if I was consulting to a large government organization and looking at the cost-effectiveness, I would suggest they have iPads or Surface Pros and give them to their public users — make them decide upfront instead of going down both paths, doubling the paths. On the market, compared to everyone else, they're the top solution. They're the best solution out there that I could see. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Xamarin Platform a rating of nine. If they become bug-free, I would give them a rating of ten.

If you are already heavily invested in the .NET platform and C# development, Xamarin is the quickest way to make native iOS apps. Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products. A company that takes great care of its people. Xamarin has just been bought by Microsoft. What an endorsement!

It does have its drawbacks. From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach. Since Xamarin is the another layer of abstraction, it also adds its own bugs to the whole process. However, the overall experience is really positive. The benefits listed above are much higher than the costs associated with the overhead needed to work with Xamarin.

I have been using Xamarin for about seven years, since before it was Xamarin (it used to be MonoTouch and MonoDroid).

We have been using Xamarin for over four years on multiple app projects of varying sizes, complexity, and code-reuse, ranging from fully featured custom UI social networking applications to data-driven forms apps with a maximum degree of codeshare and minimal UI. Xamarin can sure look like the one hammer that makes every project look like a nail, but it is not. Here at Seamgen, we consider it another tool in our toolbox, suitable to successfully realize our customer's ideas.

This product is very easy to design and develop, and it is using C#. Microsoft is supporting this application, so product reliability increases.

Be sure to look at the lessons from Xamarin University, as well as test projects on GitHub.

I have been using this solution for the past three years. I have developed many iOS and Android apps using Xamarin classic as well as Xamarin.Forms. In a nutshell, I would say that for those who love C# and mobile, this platform is a blessing. I would like to rate this solution as a seven out of 10. The reason for this rating is that this solution is definitely better than others. We can share a lot of code among the different platforms and can also use our C# skills, which we love. In addition, we can get native UI, native API access, and native performance. Still, there are a lot of areas in which Microsoft can make it better. And I must say, they are working on it. Architecture is the key point of every successful project and this is applicable to Xamarin as well. When implementing any project, one needs to be sure the app is following all the design patterns like MVVM, dependency injection, etc.

I rate it a 10 out of 10. It's the best cross-platform framework, and it continuously improves.

I would rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of 10 because, while developing applications using Xamarin Platform you will come across some library issues which need to be taken care of first. But I would strongly recommend Xamarin Platform because it’s a reliable technology compared with what is out there in the market and a plus-point is support for C# language. My only advice is that you please do a proof of concept before diving straight into development. It is always good to see beyond what you want and the requirements of your project. First, do some benchmarking of the requirements and then go for implementation of your solution.