[edgyswingset]

Speaking as someone who loves C# and has tried Xamarin ... it ain't ready for iOS yet. A significant amount of iOS development is done in the Designer and Storyboard, and Xamarin falls well short. The addition of needing to use a mac as a buildhost just makes it inconvenient.

I definitely see it improving in the future (I personally view Xamarin development as a better option for Android than standard Java), but it's not something I would recommend for an actual workplace to use.

[taspeotis]

> The addition of needing to use a mac as a buildhost just makes it inconvenient.

I agree it's an inconvenience but I find after the initial setup it works quite well. My workflow is to have a Mac Mini under my desk, with a USB extension lead taped beside my keyboard. Then I plug my iPhone in and once I push F5 Visual Studio talks to the build host which talks to my iPhone and builds/deploys/starts debugging and everything "just works".

The biggest impediment to being productive with Xamarin, in my opinion, is that every second release manages to break something.

[pistle]

I would suggest that if you are loading up large storyboards in XCode, then you could be putting yourself in a bad position for a couple of reasons in iOS, let alone trying to make it all come back together using Xamarin.

Storyboards are a decent solutions for certain problems, but if your app ends up as one monolithic or a group of large storyboards, you are going to be structuring and defining things in ways that will have friction with some of your better practices in your C# code.

That's not to say Xamarin "should be a cakewalk, you're doing it wrong." I found pain with dealing with the same area you describe -that back and forth with designs built heavily in storyboard. Not to mention, so many helpful posts on dealing with UI features and quirks seem handled or better handled in plain old NIBs + custom code, etc. Drag and drop layouts with D+D segues are nice, but when the client wants things "just so" I'd end up having to tear things out of the storyboard/designer to get all the things moving and performing well.

The storyboard failed me with AND without Xamarin.

[interpol_p]

I have completely stopped using Storyboards and Xibs in my last few projects, two of which have been quite large. I find the code so much better for it. So I wouldn't be put off Xamarin because of a lack of Interface Builder.

I am also really loving Swift when you can use it on its own (I.e., without relying on an older Obj-C based library). The strictness of the type system eliminates many runtime bugs.

[UK-AL]

I avoid storyboard, and interface builder. But my xamarin experience has been pretty impressive. They've mapped the APIs on to c# really well.

[miguelrochefort]

What issues do you have with Xamarin's iOS Designer? I actually prefer it to Xcode's.

[liampronan]

What are your reasons for preferring Xamarin? I've been meaning to try it out but have not gotten around to it

[edgyswingset]

It inevitably breaks and freezes up in VS2013 (haven't tried VS2012), particularly when defining screen transitions.