Xamarin thread

Xamarin thread.

What do Jow Forums think of it?

I have to learn it in school (software development in EU college).

I'm in 2nd year and we mostly do normal stuff, Java, C, C++, and we also started this Xamarin shit. However apparently for 3rd and 4th year most of the programming we will do is Xamarin, along with some python/ruby.

I've only started using it, so I don't really know how I feel about it. The compile times are fucking awful using Visual Studio on my poor X220, but the idea of writing mobile apps in C# sounds pretty fucking awesome, and it is really easy to design interfaces in. But this Universal Windows Platform seems like a load of fucking nonsense. Who the fuck uses the Windows App Store?

I've also heard that this thing is not used in industry whatsoever and there are literally no jobs at all and we're completely wasting our time learning this shit. There is also a rumor going around on reddit (of all places) that my college is sponsored by Microsoft and that is the sole reason we have to learn this shit.

I think that even if there are no jobs, it's still not a complete waste of time to learn this shit as we're still learning C# etc etc. Am I wrong?

So yeah, anyone else have to learn this shit?
anyone have any interesting info about it?
Is it worthwhile learning it or am I completely wasting my time?
Should I change my college?

Attached: xamarin.png (1200x650, 70K)

is that some proprietary shit

Acquired and open sourced by Microsoft of all things

xamarin used to be free like vscode a couple of years ago then went full paid nigger cia fuck although you need an iphone to test iphone apps

I'm pretty sure it's "technically" open source.

It's basically a cross-platform app development tool that was bought out by Microsoft. You can use C# to write cross-platform Android and iOS and Windows apps. The Windows apps use something called UWP that was added in Windows 10 and you can publish them in the "Windows App Store" which nobody uses.

do people actually use that?

I've no clue. I know people are forced to learn it (me) and also someone else told me they were forced to learn it for a Microsoft certification. I've no clue if it's actually used in industry, was hoping someone here could chime in.

i have literally never heard of anyone looking for xamarin devs, it's always native ios/android jobs
maybe it's more popular in usa

the API documentation needs to be better

I tried using it for android because I like C# but the documentation around it was not good enough to solve issues caused by Xamarin.Forms platform API level incompatibility issues. had to move to Java in the end.

funnily though, Xamarin compilation and archiving is faster than Android Studio on my core i7

android studio is garbage in general, no current pc can run it