Introduction to Xamarin

This chapter is all about getting to know what Xamarin is and what to expect from it. It is the only chapter that is a pure theory chapter; all the others will cover hands-on projects. You're not expected to write any code at this point, but instead, simply read through the chapter to develop a high-level understanding of what Xamarin is and how Xamarin.Forms are related to Xamarin.

We will start by defining what a native application is and what .NET as a technology brings to the table. After that, we will look at how Xamarin.Forms fit into the bigger picture and

learn when it is appropriate to use traditional Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms. We often use the term traditional Xamarin to describe applications that don't use Xamarin.Forms, even though Xamarin.Forms applications are bootstrapped through a traditional Xamarin application.

In this chapter, we will be covering the following topics:

• Native applications
• Xamarin and Mono
• Xamarin.Forms
• Setting up a development machine

Let's get started!