Microsoft .NET technology is mature.
This statement is based on years of improvements that provide great tools and a proper user experience for developers.
Even more important, the technology enables developers to create applications not only for Windows, and not only on Windows.
In general, the two main things that really matter to developers are time and functionality, and .NET covers them with both great tools and an outstanding developer experience. It enables them to create all kinds of applications:
But that’s not everything.
Currently, .NET is available not only on Windows but on MacOS and Linux as well.
There are different tools crafted for each platform:
Does this mean that each type of apps can be created no matter which operating system we use? Of course not – but there is still a significant advantage to using .NET.
A good example is web and mobile development. Web applications can be written on Linux, Windows, or MacOS. Currently, though, Xamarin development is available only on MacOS and Windows.
When you take a look at the figures below you can see that all types of frameworks are based on the .NET Standard Library. This is common core, with libraries you can use among different application types like web (ASP. NET) and mobile (Xamarin).
Before you decide to write an application, you should think about which language to go with. With .NET C#, the problem is solved: devs are able to write all types of software.
C# is a managed language that developers can use to create mobile, web, cloud, or desktop applications. This is one of the huge advantages of choosing .NET for development.
Furthermore, .NET is now open source. This does not mean that everyone can change everything. It simply means that developers have a real chance to improve .NET and add functionality that can make development faster. The source code is available on GitHub so everyone can work with it.
The global .NET community is huge, so even if you don’t know how to develop something you can often find answers on various blogs and forums.
With Xamarin, developers are able to create native mobile applications with .NET C# for Android, iOS and Windows. Cross-platform mobile development is becoming more popular today, and it is good to know how to do it the right way.
One of the biggest advantages of using Xamarin is that it enables code sharing among all three platforms (Xamarin, Windows, and iOS). The source code for applications is written in .NET C# and there is a lot of common code. Examples? The code responsible for connecting with a back-end or data model. The average amount of code sharing can be as high as 70 percent.
Mobile applications created with Xamarin are truly native mobile applications. They are compiled to native bytecode on each platform and there is no decrease in performance.
The user interface has a native look on each platform, so you can’t distinguish a UI created with Xamarin from one created with a tool dedicated to the each platform (like Xcode or Android Studio).
Java for Android. Objective-C for iOS. We all know they exist but there is no equivalent provided for Xamarin.
With Xamarin, native libraries can be easily linked, so developers are able to use them all and not have to worry about incompatibility.
Cloud – for sure you’ve heard this word somewhere. But what does it mean, exactly?
Imagine that you want to create an online shop with both web and mobile applications for shopping, and add a database for users and products on top of it. Before you start development, you ask yourself these two questions:
The cloud is the solution for both issues. You don’t have to buy any hardware, install servers software, or configure everything from scratch. Microsoft Azure (which is our cloud platform of choice) can be helpful here.
Pre-made components for developers (and a bit about security)
Let’s get back to the online shop example. For sure some back-end is needed here and also some type of database to store information. The Azure cloud platform provides pre-made components we can use for these tasks, such as:
Connections between different components hosted on Azure (like the back-end and database) are always encrypted. Azure also provides HTTP certificates by default to secure the connection between a mobile application and the back-end.
Also, Azure provides 24-hour threat management protection of hosted resources, helping to guard against malware and other threats. Which brings us to…
Scalability and Service Level Agreement (SLA)
One of the most important advantages of using Azure is scalability. When the database is full there is an option to enlarge it in just a few steps. The same can be said for web applications capacity. Of course, either of those actions will bump the pricing up a bit.
You can estimate costs with the dedicated Azure calculator.
.NET, Azure and Xamarin – what do they have in common?
Back-end, web, and mobile applications can be written with .NET C# and Visual Studio. Azure provides full support for .NET applications.
Some parts of the source code can be re-used. One example is the data model between mobile applications and back-end.
With Azure Notification Hub, developers are able to add functionality to inform users with direct notifications coming from the back-end.
Developers can easily integrate social media logins within their back-end and their mobile applications.
With Xamarin, Azure, Test Cloud, and Visual Studio Team Services, you can setup continuous integration to provide applications much faster.
Azure provides databases that can be integrated with back-end and .NET libraries to make mobile data synchronization easier between backend and application.
Thanks for your attention. I encourage you to try out both Azure and Xamarin even if you’re new to .NET. The experience will give you a much broader idea of what the two technologies are about.