The article traces the historical rivalry between Microsoft and open‑source communities, detailing how Java’s early promise led to .NET, Miguel de Icaza’s creation of GNOME and Mono, the rise of Ximian and Xamarin, Microsoft’s eventual acquisition, and the recent handover of Mono’s upstream to the Wine project.
This article reviews a range of desktop application development frameworks—including Tauri, Electron, Neutralino, Xojo, OS.js, WPF Toolkit, Flutter, Haxe, Enact, UWP, and Xamarin.Forms—detailing their features, advantages, and suitability for building efficient, cost‑effective, cross‑platform desktop software.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the .NET platform’s evolution, covering the original .NET Framework, its comparison with Java, the rise of Mono for cross‑platform support, the introduction of .NET Standard, the modern .NET Core and ASP.NET Core, and guidance on tooling and learning resources.
This article walks through the acquisition of Xamarin by Microsoft, the integration of Xamarin Studio into Visual Studio for Mac, provides step‑by‑step installation instructions, highlights the new project templates—including .NET Core and cross‑platform solutions—and shares early impressions of the IDE’s potential for mobile development.
During the second day of Microsoft Build 2016, Xamarin was showcased as a free, open‑source solution that lets Visual Studio users develop, test, and monitor Android and iOS applications on Windows, including an iOS simulator previously limited to macOS.
The author recounts transitioning from PHP and .NET web development to building Android and iOS apps with Xamarin, describing the motivations, new programming paradigms like MVVM and async, the steep learning curve, and the ongoing commitment to mastering mobile development.
