The following is a short interview with long-time Succinctly series author Alessandro Del Sole, whose latest book, Visual Studio for Mac Succinctly, was published recently. You can download the book from our ebook portal.
What should people know about the subject of your book? Why is it important?
Visual Studio for Mac allows for building mobile and .NET applications in a cross-platform-oriented way. People working on the Mac who need or want to use the Microsoft platforms to deliver cross-platform projects now have the proper environment. So the subject of the book is important because it introduces the VS for Mac’s development environment to both people who never worked with the Microsoft stack and those who have existing experience with the Microsoft development platforms, but not with a Mac.
When did you first become interested in Visual Studio for Mac?
Since its very first release, because I was working on an existing, big Xamarin project for iOS, and it made the deployment easier and faster.
By writing this ebook, did you learn anything new yourself?
I already knew most of the features, but it was great to see how many updates and improvements have been brought in by Microsoft.
How will VS for Mac change over the next few years?
Just my opinion, but it will probably change accordingly to how .NET Core and Xamarin will change, providing the proper support for new and updated features in these technologies.
Do you see the subject as part of a larger trend in software development?
Yes. At its core, Visual Studio for Mac not only allows for building mobile apps with Xamarin and web apps with .NET Core, but it has integrated support for cloud services based on Microsoft Azure and for team collaboration, so it perfectly fits into a variety of trends.
What other books or resources on this topic do you recommend?
The recently updated Xamarin.Forms Succinctly by myself and .NET Core Succinctly by Giancarlo Lelli.
How do you stay up-to-date on industry news?
I usually keep an eye on official blogs and feeds related to the technologies I use at work. As an example:
The Visual Studio blog: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/
The .NET blog: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/
The Xamarin blog: https://blog.xamarin.com/
Do you have a blog page or a website where people can find you?
I can be reached on Twitter at @progalex, also I have a Facebook public page about my technical contents at https://www.facebook.com/AlessandroDelSoleMVP.