dark side of xamarin: day-to-day usage exeprience
TRANSCRIPT
Dark side of Xamarinday-to-day usage experience
NorApps AS & Konstantin Loginov
Konstantin Loginov
9 years in mobile development• Windows Mobile• webOS• Windows Phone• iOS• Android
Football & mobile applications fanatic
| NorApps AS
Small team of 6 (soon 7!) people from Bergen, Oslo and Guadalajara
FotMob is our main product
We love football (yes, it’s a pre-requirement)
Featured by Google & Apple
2009. It’s a dark time for mobile developers. iPhone is taking over the market and changing the mobile world.
Obj-C is the last hope iOS-developers have. Android 1.5 has been released, people use Eclipse for Android-software development. Monotouch 1.0 finally released.
Angry Birds yet to be released in a few months.
Objective-C-developers have never been in THAT demand
Microsoft is still dominating
Rumors about brand new Windows Mobile / Phone
C# is one of the most advanced languages
* Miguel de Icaza, creator of GNOME, Mono and Xamarin
*
WHEN YOU FOUND A NEW FRAMEWORK
Xamarin is cool
I ❤ C#, I’m sure you too
Xamarin apps are fairly reliable and fast*
* Millions of FotMob users can confirm!
Complete API coverageSame-day support for new releases
After all… It’s cross-platform!
Sounds like Xamarin is perfect… But?
But it’s not
Xamarin
Extra layer between you and user
You still need to be an expert in Obj-C, Swift, Java
No StackOverflow support!
No cocoapods, JCenter
Bugs
... and other 300 (opened / confirmed “iOS” bugs); 5000+ bugs for all categories
Xamarin-apps are “heavy”
46.0 47.1 47.2Download size 48.0 MB* 50.1 MB 39.9 MB
Install size 73.3 MB 80.1 MB 69.6 MB
Features Core appwatchOS 1.0 AppToday Extension
Core appUNNotificationContentExtensionUNNotificationServiceExtension
watchOS 1.0 AppToday Extension
Core appUNNotificationContentExtensionUNNotificationServiceExtension
watchOS 3.0 AppToday Extension
Xamarin-writtenSwift-written
* Device Type: iPhone 6s
46.1 (summer 2016)
54.0(now)
Download size 68.8 MB 58 MB
Install size 110 MB 60.1 MB
Features Core appUNNotificationContentExtensionUNNotificationServiceExtension
watchOS 1.0 AppToday Extension
Core appUNNotificationContentExtensionUNNotificationServiceExtension
watchOS 3.0 AppToday Extension
Xamarin-writtenSwift-written
* Device Type: iPhone 6s
Xamarin Studio*
* Visual Studio doesn’t sound like an ideal solution either
Microsoft
* Not only because I’ve been working there for 3.5 years
Acquisition is always a risk
Windows Phone is dead
Apple
– Can we be featured? – Sure, do you watchOS 2.0 support? – .... – And what about now? – Have you watched WWDC? Our new notifications are amazing! –
You don’t want this to happen. Trust me.
Same-day support != working product
We gave up
We rewrote all application from Xamarin to Swift in 2 months
Public release scheduled in Q2 2017
We have released semi-Swift-version with support all new iOS 10 features and have been featured
Xamarin still does not support 3D-touch-notifications *
* 19th of February
Subjective Takeaways
Not suitable for UI-intensive
applications
Often Xamarin.Android-developer and Xamarin.iOS-developer are 2 different
people
Limited job-market
Very few successful consumer-focused showcases*
*even with React-Native
To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Warren Buffett
@klogi_norgehttps://no.linkedin.com/in/[email protected]