Developing for mobile devices is not child's play: not only there are three main platforms, but also, each have their own SDK's - but there is a plethora of many more devices and variations in screen sizes, orientations, the memory, varied specifications and so on it goes.
How Xamarin aids developers create better mobile applications
In the early times, it used to be quite easy developing applications. There used to be a system on the developer’s desk and it was crystal clear how that system would behave in all scenarios. Even in later times, when every application targeted at web development it was not considerably hard as the code would be on an individual web server and (by and large) the code did what you expected it to do. And then there was the mobile revolution. Developers needed to build applications that would behave similarly in a number of situations at any time and on any device.
And this is the inception of the struggle for every developer. Developing for mobile devices is not child's play: not only there are three main platforms, but also, each has their own SDK's - but there is a plethora of many more devices and variations in screen sizes, orientations, the memory, varied specifications and so on it goes. To balance all this in coding is a cumbersome task. Due to the relatively low-level programming on mobile devices, developers get a lot of freedom and flexibility but that freedom also has a price because the developer is responsible for more work to handle things like touch and swipe gestures, radio and accelerator data, camera and video hardware, etc.
The management and transition, even between screens when data is involved are far from a simple. Developing a native mobile application takes a lot more time than developing the same functionality for a desktop or a web application. Nowadays a developer no longer has to modify the design and custom code for different platforms or systems. Xamarin lets you write mobile apps on any platform using C#. In this post, we’ll take a look at four ways in which Xamarin can help.
Development in a single language
Becoming a prominent mobile developer is an endless-cycle of research. There are so many things to keep in mind, so many constraints to deal with, like the process of a life cycle, UI boundaries, the SDK for every package (just to name a few) that you must keep in check with. To develop a new platform you may end up learning a completely new language, this can cause a lot of jeopardy for a developer. In Xamarin applications, we use C# however, and any accomplished C# developer will immediately be pretty comfortable with Xamarin.
Xamarin faithfully provides complete features for C# and the .NET class libraries implementations. It’s possible for a well over of 70 percent code of .NET/C# to be compatible using Xamarin. Even novice .NET/C# developers and enthusiasts will certainly save tons of learning-time. Contrary to this, Android and iOS use of two completely separate programming methodologies: Java and Objective-C respectively and fewer of a lot of developers have prowess in both of these meaning an enormous lot would need to learn both to work on a cross-platform project. Learning Java and Objective-C brings a great toll on upon one as they not only need to learn the features required for development, but all need complete understood of both the languages like learning different collections to just name a few. Using Xamarin, C# will be the one and only language for you to work with - and a ton of libraries for Android and iOS.
One code, many Systems
Writing the application in one language for different systems does not lead to the loss of functionality. Some cross-platform application development tools often hide the platform’s unique functions thus leading to applications that just don’t feel native on different devices. Xamarin, however, adds the iOS specific .NET classes and Android specific .NET classes to the existing .NET classes. This combination of code. NET and platform specific classes allow the developer to write applications that share logic between the platforms but still take advantage of the platform’s unique features. The more code that can be shared the less likely it is that bugs will appear in the code and the faster the developer can write the application. According to Xamarin, you get the chance to reuse 60 to 80 percent of your code and this cuts development time in half. The time you save here is valuable and can be invested in new features for the application.
Bringing multiple platforms together
Xamarin is gaining more attention every day and with good reason. In a world where a variety of mobile platforms coexist, we need a development tool that allows developers to support multiple platforms with minimal duplication of work. With Xamarin.Forms you even get a complete UI design tool that can build cross-platform mobile applications. Using Xamarin will lead to a shorter development cycle due to the C# and .NET implementation, the reusable code and the availability of a test cloud. This is something every developer must take a look at.
Test your code on thousands of devices in the cloud
Writing a multi-platform application is one thing. Testing it on a wide range of devices is another. It’s possible that a developer will have access to an iOS, Android and Windows Phone but what about all the different configurations like screen size, resolution, memory and so on? Xamarin offers developers a test cloud. This is an automated user-interface testing service that is designed to enable mobile developers to test their apps on hundreds of mobile devices. With the test cloud, developers are able to test their applications on real devices, not emulated ones. The tests run on these devices provides the users with detailed logs and screenshot about how the app performed on each device.