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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

Microsoft has signed an agreement [asp.net] to acquire Xamarin [xamarin.com], a leading platform provider for mobile app development:

In conjunction with Visual Studio, Xamarin provides a rich mobile development offering that enables developers to build mobile apps using C# and deliver fully native mobile app experiences to all major devices – including iOS, Android, and Windows. Xamarin’s approach enables developers to take advantage of the productivity and power of .NET to build mobile apps, and to use C# to write to the full set of native APIs and mobile capabilities provided by each device platform. This enables developers to easily share common app code across their iOS, Android and Windows apps while still delivering fully native experiences for each of the platforms. Xamarin’s unique solution has fueled amazing growth for more than four years.

[...] Through Xamarin Test Cloud, all types of mobile developers—C#, Objective-C, Java and hybrid app builders —can also test and improve the quality of apps using thousands of cloud-hosted phones and devices. Xamarin was recently named [businessinsider.com] one of the top startups that help run the Internet.

I have heard of Xamarin, but have no experience using their products. I have experience MANY years ago with tools that aimed to provide native-like appearance and actions with a common code base, but they always seemed to come up short. How well does Xamarin's products/tools hold up?

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Original Submission