The Rise of Xamarin - August 2013

Xamarin continues to blossom with the release of 2.0 including Xamarin Studio, C# 5, Async, F#, and announcing Test Cloud. There's definitely a lot of momentum and excitement around this platform, and thankfully it has the substance to back it up.

Present at St. Louis ALT.NET http://www.meetup.com/stlaltdotnet/events/133172182/

Transcript

1. The Rise of Xamarin:
   Mobile Development in C#
   Thursday, August 29, 13
   

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2. David Ortinau
   @davidortinau
   http://davidortinau.com
   17 yrs web, interactive, mobile.
   Xamarin MVP
   Flash, iPhone, Android, WP7
   BA English,
   Maryville University
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3. Thursday, August 29, 13
   

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4. Thursday, August 29, 13
   

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5. Thursday, August 29, 13
   

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6. I Don’t Hate Objective-C
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7. I Don’t Hate JavaScript
   Or HTML5
   Or HTML6
   Or HTML7
   Or HTML8
   Or HTML9
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8. Let’s Talk About
   • Cross Platform Holy Grail
   • What is Mono?
   • Who is Xamarin?
   • The World According to Xamarin
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9. Write Once Run Anywhere
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10. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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11. Write Once Run Anywhere
    • Do you hate users?*
    • Most cross-platform solutions benefit developers and customers,
    but rarely value users and user experience.
    * kidding, of course you don’t. Users are cuddly.
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12. Either/Or
    • Concessions are made to afford faster development and less
    code to target multiple platforms.
    • Typically you must learn a new, custom way of coding for the
    middle framework in order to use it and target multiple
    platforms.
    *learning new stuff is not bad. Embrace it. Then decide the best path.
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13. iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide
    “An aspiring iOS developer faces three
    basic hurdles: You must learn the
    Objective-C language...You must master
    the big ideas... You must master the
    frameworks.”
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14. Both/And
    • How can we achieve broad reach across platforms while:
    • reusing as much code as possible
    • not sacrificing user experience
    • not sacrificing performance
    • not sacrificing features
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15. What is Mono?
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16. Mono Overview
    • Run .Net code across multiple platforms
    • Project began in 2001
    • Novell “held” project for years
    • Mono “died” when Novell was acquired April 2011
    • Xamarin founded May 2011
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17. Key Parts
    • open source implementation of Microsoft's .Net Framework based on
    the Ecma standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime
    • Mono's C# compiler is feature complete for C# 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0
    (Ecma)
    • The runtime implements the Ecma Common Language Infrastructure
    (CLI). The runtime provides a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, an Ahead-of-
    Time compiler (AOT), a library loader, the garbage collector, a threading
    system and interoperability functionality.
    • August 2013: What’s new in Mono
    http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Aug-20-1.html
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18. Supported Platforms
    • Linux
    • Android
    • Mac OS X
    • iOS
    • BSD
    • Sun Solaris
    • Unix
    • Microsoft Windows
    • Nintendo Wii
    • Sony PlayStation 3
    • XBox
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19. Who is Xamarin?
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20. Xamarin Rising
    • Miguel de Icaza, Nat Friedman, Joseph Hill
    • 20+ Members from the Mono team
    • Initially Self funded
    • Series A $12M July 2012
    • Series B $16M July 2013
    • 20,000+ Paid Developer Seats
    • 350,000 Members
    • Gartner Award “Mobile Visionary”
    • Selling
    • Xamarin.Mac, Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android, Test Cloud
    • Support Contracts
    • Other projects include MonoGame, Playscript, Xamarin.Mobile,
    Xamarin.Social, Xamarin.Auth
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21. XobotOS
    • Android Ported to C#
    • Sharpen - code conversion tool
    • http://blog.xamarin.com/2012/05/01/android-in-c-sharp/
    • https://github.com/xamarin/XobotOS
    • https://github.com/xamarin/XobotOS/tree/master/sharpen
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22. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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23. Miguel
    “A project that we started because we
    thought it would be fun to do has turned
    out to yield some serious benefits for our
    products. It’s important for a startup to
    stay focused, but sometimes you have to
    try something crazy to make progress. And
    who knows, maybe Google will thank us
    some day.”
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24. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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25. Text
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26. How will it scale?
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27. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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28. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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29. PlayScript
    • Zynga open sourced
    • Xamarin working to fully integrate into Mono
    • Superset of Actionscript
    • With C# 5 Features
    • Optionally strong typed
    • Dual compiler: C# and PlayScript side by side in
    the same project
    • Full Xamarin Studio support
    • PlayScript/Actionscript Stage3D / OpenGL
    • Starling & Away3D
    • https://github.com/playscript
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30. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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31. The World According to Xamarin
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32. Thursday, August 29, 13
    

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33. Compiles a native binary
    • not cross compiled
    • not interpreted
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34. Platform
    Runtime
    C#
    UI
    WP8 iOS Android
    .NET Mono
    Business Logic
    Silverlight Xamarin.iOS Xamarin.Android
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35. Requirements
    • Xamarin.iOS
    • Mac OS X and Xamarin Studio
    • Windows and Visual Studio w/ Xamarin plugin, or Xamarin Studio
    • required Mac build machine
    • Xamarin.Android
    • Mac OS X or Windows
    • Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio 2010
    • Windows Phone
    • Windows
    • Visual Studio 2010
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36. Runtime
    • Mono 3.2
    • .NET 4.5
    • C# 5
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37. New in Xamarin 2.0
    • Xamarin Studio & Component Store
    • Async await support
    • Portable Class Libraries
    • Improved SGen GC
    • Incremental builds
    • Reactive Extensions
    • F#
    • Razor
    • Entity Framework
    • ASP.NET WebStack
    • Cocos2D Port
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38. Compiling
    • Apple doesn’t allow runtime compilation so Xamarin.iOS
    provides Ahead-of-Time compilation
    • Publish directly to TestFlight
    • Android allows it, so Xamarin.Android employs Just-in-Time
    compilation
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39. Bindings
    • Follow the conventions of the native platform
    • UIViewController
    • UITableViewController
    • Create custom Bindings for 3rd party libraries
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40. Memory Management
    • Obj-C is retain count*
    • Xamarin.iOS abstracts this adding Garbage Collection
    • Most classes expose a Dispose() method
    *newer iOS provides Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) that makes this less of a burden
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41. Delegates
    • Obj-C makes heavy use of delegation
    • C# provides delegation methods
    • C# replaces most with events
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42. Code Sharing
    • View code is platform specific
    • Business logic can be shared across all platforms using
    • Portable Class Libraries
    • Shared Libraries
    • Linked Files
    • Other methods
    • Partial Classes
    • Conditional Compilation
    • Default platform symbols provided
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43. Persistence
    • Isolated Storage
    • Read/Write from file using XMLSerializer
    • Database
    • Sql Server Compact Edition - WP7
    • sqlite - iOS and Android
    • For WP7
    • C#-SQLite - APIs
    http://code.google.com/p/csharp-sqlite/
    • sqlite-net - ORM
    https://github.com/praeclarum/sqlite-net
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44. Testing
    • NUnitLite
    http://www.nunitlite.com/
    •
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45. Xamarin.Mobile
    • Base class library for mobile services
    • Location
    • Contacts
    • Photos
    • Decrease the amount of platform-specific
    code needed to perform common tasks
    • http://components.xamarin.com/view/
    xamarin.mobile/
    • https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Mobile
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46. Xamarin.Auth
    • Simplify authentication
    • OAuth 1.0 and 2.0
    • Includes
    • Facebook
    • Google
    • Foursquare
    • http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.auth/
    • https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Auth
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47. Xamarin.Social
    • Posts statuses, links, images/media to social networks
    • Access social network APIs using authenticated requests.
    • Automatically and securely store user credentials using Xamarin.Auth.
    • Cross Platform
    • Extensible, currently has support for:
    • App.net
    • Facebook
    • Flickr
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
    • http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.social/
    • https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Social
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48. Popular Libraries
    • TinyMessenger
    http://hg.grumpydev.com/tinyioc/wiki/TinyMessenger
    • TinyIoC
    http://hg.grumpydev.com/tinyioc/wiki/Home
    • RestSharp
    http://restsharp.org/
    • MonoCross
    http://code.google.com/p/monocross/
    • MvvmCross
    https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross
    • MvvmLight
    http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/
    • C#-SQLite
    http://code.google.com/p/csharp-sqlite/
    • sqlite-net
    https://github.com/praeclarum/sqlite-net
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49. More Links
    • MWC 2012 App
    https://github.com/xamarin/mobile-samples/tree/master/MWC
    • NYC Code Camp 6 App
    https://github.com/gshackles/NycCodeCamp6
    • Mobile Development in C#
    http://amzn.com/1449320236
    • Evolve Presentations
    http://xamarin.com/evolve/2013
    • Monkeyspace
    http://monkeyspace.org/
    • https://github.com/davidortinau
    • https://github.com/xamarin
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50. Thanks!
    @davidortinau
    http://davidortinau.com
    dave@davidortinau.com
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