Matt Harrington

Speaking Sessions

• Intro to Xamarin: Cross-platform iOS & Android Apps with Native Performance

  1:15 PM Sunday   Room: S-150

  Mobile developers typically have to choose between writing native apps or cross-platform apps. Native apps, written in Obj-C, Swift, or Java, give you great performance and full access to the platform's APIs. However, you need to write separate apps for each platform. Cross-platform apps, typically written in JavaScript, let you easily run on multiple operating systems. However, it's tricky using 100% of the native platform's APIs, and performance sometimes suffers. Enter Xamarin. Xamarin apps run with native performance, can use 100% of each platform's APIs, and provide significant code sharing across platforms. Xamarin apps are written in C# or F#, and benefit from the enormous .NET developer ecosystem. Xamarin development can be done on both Mac and Windows. This talk will be an overview of Xamarin's various components followed by a deeper dive in to Xamarin.Forms. With Xamarin.Forms, you can write cross-platform user interfaces using XAML. If you optionally want a free T-shirt, bring your laptop with Xamarin already installed. Download it from http://xamarin.com. Mac users should also come with Xcode already installed. Download it from the Mac App Store. Mac users can use the iOS Simulator which comes with Xcode. Windows users will have to either bring an Android phone with a USB cable, or install an Android emulator. Download the Xamarin Android Player, or use the VS2015 Emulator for Android. All of these downloads are large, so do them at home before SVCC starts.