Microsoft has launched a new cross-platform development show on Channel 9. Based around its Xamarin platform, The Xamarin Show will appear weekly, and the first episode is available now.

While I haven’t been a “real” developer for a while now—I was at one time, and wrote my own basic web site CMS and several books about software developments back in the day—I’ve tried to keep up with this world over the years. And more recently, I’ve stepped it up a bit. I’m now participating an Android Basics Nanodegree program at Udacity, for example, and I’ve been researching other similar offerings.

I see a lot of good options out there for Android and iOS developers, and … less so for Windows. I‘ve often promoted Bob Tabor’s Windows-based development series on Channel 9, because he’s great, and he also has his own courses and curriculum at Learn Visual Studio.net.

But this new Xamarin show hits at a slightly different angle: Using Visual Studio and C#, which I find to be superior to the Android/iOS alternatives, to create cross-platform apps that can run across Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. In other words, it’s just like Xamarin itself, which you may recall Microsoft purchased back in February.

I’ve always been intrigued by Xamarin, both for the Visual Studio/C+ angle, and because Windows coding legend Charles Petzold worked for Xamarin and wrote the definitive guide to the environment. But Xamarin was always expensive.

Well, not anymore. Now that it’s part of Microsoft, Xamarin is free and is now included with Visual Studio. Which means anyone can do it. All you need to do is learn how.

And The Xamarin Show can help.

“The Xamarin Show is a dedicated weekly show hosted by yours truly all about native cross-platform mobile development for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows with Xamarin,” Microsoft’s James Montemagno explains. “Join me and my guests as we discuss building mobile apps, integrating SDKs, extending mobile apps, the latest Xamarin news, awesome apps developers are building, and so much more.”

And the first episode of the show, called Sharing Code, is now available.

Check it out!

Tagged with Xamarin