[oropolo]

In essence, JetBrains has caught up to where Xamarin was prior to the announcement of Xamarin.Forms: the ability from one solution to have separate iOS and Android UI applications with a business logic library shared between the two, all written in C# or F# (the two languages supported by the Mono compiler). The main difference is that one of the vendors actually supports the language in question (Kotlin) as a first-class citizen.

And going the other way, there's been noise for a couple years that Android apps could be written in Swift, achieving the same effect in reverse.

[the_trapper]

> The main difference is that one of the vendors actually supports the language in question (Kotlin) as a first-class citizen.

How is this different for Xamarin? C# has first class support on Windows.

[oropolo]

Windows isn't a mobile platform. They tried 2.5 times and have given up. In mobile it's iOS and Android, and neither Apple nor Google recognize C# as a first-class language. If you can write a compiler that emits code that LLVM can compile to ARM binary with Xcode or package your MSIL with a micro .NET VM on Android, then more power to you but Apple and Google aren't going to help you if you get stuck.

[pjmlp]

Windows tablets, laptops and 2-1 devices are quite mobile to me.

[rad_gruchalski]

Prerty difficult to find a good dash mount, no usb charging, bit bright at night and having to plug in an external gps unit is fairly limiting though.

[pjmlp]

The car computer already takes care of that.

[oropolo]

And an AS/400 was perfectly "mobile" to Arnold S. back in his prime. :-)

[tomc1985]

Xamarin's "first class" support for Windows is Windows Store only though?

[merb]

no.

While still in Preview, Xamarin.Forms actually supports Linux with Gtk#, Windows with WPF and UWP and Mac with Cocoa (actually Cocoa with C# does work really well).

[avisser]

The context of the article is about iOS & Android apps, so 1st class support on Windows is nice, but not germane.