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
2. David Ortinau @davidortinau http://davidortinau.com 17 yrs web, interactive, mobile. Xamarin MVP Flash, iPhone, Android, WP7 BA English, Maryville University Thursday, August 29, 13
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6. I Don’t Hate Objective-C Thursday, August 29, 13
7. I Don’t Hate JavaScript Or HTML5 Or HTML6 Or HTML7 Or HTML8 Or HTML9 Thursday, August 29, 13
8. Let’s Talk About • Cross Platform Holy Grail • What is Mono? • Who is Xamarin? • The World According to Xamarin Thursday, August 29, 13
9. Write Once Run Anywhere 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. Thursday, August 29, 13
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. Thursday, August 29, 13
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.” Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
15. What is Mono? Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
18. Supported Platforms • Linux • Android • Mac OS X • iOS • BSD • Sun Solaris • Unix • Microsoft Windows • Nintendo Wii • Sony PlayStation 3 • XBox Thursday, August 29, 13
19. Who is Xamarin? Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 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.” Thursday, August 29, 13
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25. Text Thursday, August 29, 13
26. How will it scale? 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 Thursday, August 29, 13
30. Thursday, August 29, 13
31. The World According to Xamarin Thursday, August 29, 13
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33. Compiles a native binary • not cross compiled • not interpreted Thursday, August 29, 13
34. Platform Runtime C# UI WP8 iOS Android .NET Mono Business Logic Silverlight Xamarin.iOS Xamarin.Android Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
36. Runtime • Mono 3.2 • .NET 4.5 • C# 5 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
39. Bindings • Follow the conventions of the native platform • UIViewController • UITableViewController • Create custom Bindings for 3rd party libraries Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
41. Delegates • Obj-C makes heavy use of delegation • C# provides delegation methods • C# replaces most with events Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
44. Testing • NUnitLite http://www.nunitlite.com/ • Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
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 Thursday, August 29, 13
50. Thanks! @davidortinau http://davidortinau.com dave@davidortinau.com Thursday, August 29, 13