Here is a summary of the ten points Seba described:

1. You can create amazing applications using .NET as a platform. You can write C# code, as well as F# code. Basically, you can write everything you want using .NET as a platform.
2. Creating a library with Xamarin using .Net Standard, means you can share this library with other platforms, such as .NET core. Therefore, you can reuse your libraries.
3. The combination of the .NET environment and Visual Studio means you can write your application on both Windows and Mac machines.
4. Xamarin is cross-platform! You can share modals, classes and logic functionality across all the platforms, such as Android, iOS and Windows. In practice, you can share 75% of your code!
5. Xamarin will compile your application as native: there is no additional layer between Xamarin and your application. Your application will have native controls and native performance! Also, this allows you to use all the functionalities your devices offer.
6. In the traditional approach, you will have different projects with different views for each platform. However, Xamarin.Forms actually does allow you to share views across platforms as well. In Xamarin.Forms, you can write XAML views. It will still include native controls in the different platforms. Tip: take a look at Xamarin.Forms if you want to work with Xamarin for the first time.
7. Xamarin Essentials allows you to add device functionality, such as GPS, to your Xamarin.Forms projects. Xamarin Essentials is included with the Visual Studio application you need to install to start working with Xamarin.
8. Xamarin is open-source: you can find all the code in GitHub! There are more than 60.000 contributors: a real big and active community which we cherish at Xablu a lot!
9. There is a great community working with Xamarin. There are a lot of videos, blogs and youtube channels to find the information to learn about using Xamarin.
10. Xamarin is free! It has no licenses for commercial use! If you want to publish your apps, you do have to pay the platform subscription, such as for Apple or Android, but you never have to pay a fee for using Xamarin.

What is your favourite point on this list?

Visual Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) created by Microsoft that is used to develop all kind of applications including Desktop, Web and Mobile. We also have a light IDE called Visual Studio Code: on one hand, it is limited, but on the other hand it is really flexible and extensible. Both IDEs support this feature called Live Share, which is integrated in the regular version and works as an extension in Visual Studio Code. With Live Share, you can work on the same project at the same time with your colleagues. This is not just limited to coding on the same page, but also includes debugging together, sharing terminal (command line) and servers (localhost).  In the last Microsoft Build event (link to previous blog post) a new feature was announced: audio calls.  

Currently, the most used practice in companies outside of this new feature is to share your screen in a voice call, which works well for certain onboarding processes like showing how work is organised. However, it is not interactive since there is just one person in charge of making changes in the projects and, therefore, less suitable for getting a new team member involved in a new codebase. With Visual Studio Live Share, all of the attendees are able to modify the documents. Moreover, if you don’t have Visual Studio installed, you can still share your session since it is compatible with Visual Studio Codespaces, which works in the Azure cloud and can be used from the browser. 

Do you have a new mate in your company? You can work together for the first week, it a very effective way to show how your work is and also, introduce yourself since you can do audio calls now. 

We already knew that .NET 5 is going to be released later this year, but Microsoft surprised us yesterday with the announcement of .NET 6, which is planned for November 2021. Even though that date is still far from today, we know that it will there are big plans for Xamarin: both Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin will finally become first-class citizens in the .NET world, under the acronym MAUI, which stands for .NET Multi- platform App UI.   

MAUI will introduce a new approach for developing apps in Visual Studio: by default, there will be a single project that will use multi-targeting to offer 100% customization. It will have support for MVVM, MVU and Blazor! MacOS and WPF will be officially supported (and Linux is also in the roadmap).  

But the changes don’t stop there: the Xamarin team is currently considering architectural changes in the Xamarin.Forms framework that will make the codebase simpler and offer better performance. Moreover, Xamarin.Essentials will be part of the .NET APIs.   

What will happen then to Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android? Both will be embedded into the .NET APIs as well and they will become .NET for iOS and .NET for Android. 

We cannot wait for MAUI to be released as we continue to embrace Xamarin. Want to read more about MAUI? This blogpost from Microsoft will provide you all the ins and outs!