This Changes Everything: Xamarin Tools Are Now Free!

Thursday, 31 March 2016
  • By
  • Jeff Ammons
  • Tags:
  • Programming
  • Xamarin
  • Mobile
  • Mono
  • Build Conference
  • Microsoft
  • Visual Studio

Scott Guthrie

Scott Guthrie

This is HUGE, no kidding.

For several years now Xamarin has provided an excellent set of tools that let you write mobile apps in one language, C#, then compile it to native apps on each platform.

Many of us believed this was the best approach for mobile, but couldn't justify the pricetag for the Xamarin stack.

Guess what?

Microsoft bought Xamarin and announced at the Build Conference this week that not only is the pricetag becoming “Free” the source itself is becoming “Free”.

That's right free as in beer and free as in liberty.

Boom.

Even more amazingly they will be included with Visual Studio's Community Edition which is also free (at least as in beer).

I really do think this will change the way people build mobile apps.

Why on earth would I write an iOS app and an Android app that share no code?

I've loved the C# language for years, and now there's no reason I can't use it to write all my mobile apps.