{"id":13472,"date":"2017-02-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/post\/get-started-using-xamarin-cross-platform-development-software\/"},"modified":"2022-06-13T09:44:21","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T13:44:21","slug":"get-started-using-xamarin-cross-platform-development-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/get-started-using-xamarin-cross-platform-development-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Started: Using Xamarin, a Cross-Platform Development Software"},"content":{"rendered":"
In the 1990s, James Gosling and a group of computer scientists at Sun Microsystems faced a challenging programming problem.<\/p>\n
They were developing C++ code to run on set-top-boxes, the little black boxes that sit on top of your television for Cable TV. However, the software on each of these boxes ran on a slightly different platform, forcing developers to re-write the code for each system.<\/p>\n
Out of this struggle came the concept of \u201cwrite once, run anywhere\u201d or WORA for short. More importantly, Gosling and his team at Sun proposed to solve this programming language problem.<\/p>\n
Their efforts eventually led to Java, universally known today for its ability to run on a variety of computers and devices.
\nMobile App Industry Discovers Xamarin<\/p>\n
Fast-forward 20 years and the mobile app industry found itself facing the same dilemma.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say you were a developer, creating apps for the Apple iPhone. That meant you wrote code using a language called Objective-C with a tool called Xcode.<\/p>\n
Now let\u2019s say you came up with a great app idea, wrote the code and it sold like hot cakes on the App Store.<\/p>\n
Typically, after this happened, you would shift your focus to the Android market, which makes up roughly half of all smartphones sold. If you wanted to play in this market, your app would have to be completely re-written for Android using (ironically) Java.<\/p>\n
Around this same time, Miguel de Icaza was working on porting the Microsoft .NET run-time environment to run on Linux. De Icaza was not initially focused on the mobile app space, but as his work on Mono (a platform that allows .NET apps to run on a variety of systems, including Linux, OSX, Android, and iOS) evolved, it became apparent that C# code written for .NET could (in theory) run on both Apple\u2019s iOS and Google\u2019s Android.<\/p>\n
Mono would eventually form the basis of Xamarin, a cross-platform development environment.<\/p>\n
In this blog, we\u2019ll explore the details of Xamarin, including:<\/p>\n
\u2022 What is it?
\n\u2022 Who is the intended audience?
\n\u2022 Why should I care about it?
\n\u2022 What are the associated costs?
\n\u2022 When and where can I get training?
\n\u2022 How do I get started?<\/p>\n
If you made it this far, fasten your seatbelt; you\u2019re about to embark on a tour of Xamarin and all that it has to offer for cross-platform mobile app development!<\/p>\n\n