This is just too hot to not share right away. During the Day 2 Keynote at Build (), taking place this week in San Francisco, Microsoft Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie announced that Xamarin would now be included with Visual Studio at no extra charge. That is right, “free“. This includes not only Visual Studio 2015, but also Visual Studio Community edition that is already free.
Wow right?
You can read even more insights direct from Xamarin’s blog.
What this means
For all you mobile app developers, this is a game changer. Xamarin has been a great tool to create mobile apps using one codebase that would work across multiple device types. It competes with React Native, Trigger.io and others, but using C# as its primary language. By being able to focus on one primary codebase that works across iOS, Android and Windows Phones, app developers could focus on creating meaningful, feature rich cross device applications rather than having to learn, program, debug and test natively on each platform. Xamarin offers powerful emulation tools for primary debugging and within Visual Studio, Xamarin developers will get the same general programming experience they are used to with any other Visual Studio development.
When Microsoft announced that they purchased Xamarin last month, that was already big news, but now that Xamarin will be included for free in Visual Studio? Huge.
Xamarin Test Cloud
Xamarin also offers Xamarin Test Cloud, a cloud based offering that binds directly into Visual Studio that will offer cloud based cross device testing. This was also demoed during the Day 2 Keynote, so if you haven’t seen Test Cloud before, check that out as well. Test Cloud will continue to be a stand alone product, but when combined with Xamarin and Visual Studio, with screen-capture, video playback and more, mobile app developers have such powerful tools at their fingertips to make the apps that will change the world.
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