The following is a short interview with Succinctly series author Alessandro Del Sole, whose latest book, Xamarin.Forms Succinctly, was published on Thursday, September 21. You can download the book here.
What should people know about Xamarin.Forms? Why is it important?
Xamarin.Forms is becoming more and more important because it allows you to create mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows 10 (mobile and desktop), macOS, and tvOS from a single, shared C# codebase. Developers who have a C# and .NET background can build mobile apps for multiple platforms by re-using their existing skills, facing a relatively small learning curve. As you can imagine, this opens an infinite number of new opportunities.
When did you first become interested in Xamarin.Forms?
Two years ago, I got started with Xamarin.Forms because a customer wanted to build a mobile app for iOS devices. As a long-time .NET developer with no time at all to learn Apple’s native tools, I immediately understood that Xamarin.Forms could be my savior. So I worked on this project and, as I was learning more about Xamarin, I also started delivering courses on this topic.
By writing this e-book, did you learn anything new yourself?
Definitely. I had a chance to take a closer look at all the new features available in Visual Studio 2017. Among others, the improved XAML editing experience and the Xamarin.Forms previewer are my favorite features.
How will this subject change over the next few years?
There’s a tremendous interest in Xamarin.Forms and the platform is continuously evolving. I do expect many new features, improvements, target platforms, and tools in the near future.
Do you see the subject as part of a larger trend in software development?
Current trends in software development are related to cloud services and artificial intelligence (e.g., Microsoft Cognitive Services). Mobile devices, and consequently mobile apps, can consume both in many ways. Xamarin.Forms perfectly fits into these opportunities, giving developers an option to build intelligent, cloud-based and cross-platform apps in C#. This is really amazing.
What other books or resources on this topic do you recommend?
I would recommend Visual Studio 2017 Succinctly by myself, and UWP Succinctly and More UWP Succinctly by Matteo Pagani, which includes topics that might be useful when targeting Windows 10 in your Xamarin.Forms solutions.