Xamarin’s Miguel de Icaza was booked for a standard session room at Build, Microsoft’s developer conference in San Francisco, but the session was moved to the keynote room because of demand. I am not sure how the likely demand was calculated, but it was possibly something to do with the event app that lets attendees plan their agenda.
It was just as well that the session got moved.
The attendance at the session mirrored my observation that Xamarin’s stand in the third-party partner exhibition was drawing more attention than any other. Xamarin’s tools let developers port applications to iOS and Android while still using C# and the .NET Framework.
I am not sure what to conclude from the obvious high level of interest in compiling apps for iOS and Android. You can interpret this as good news for Microsoft, in that it keeps developers working in .NET and with easy access to the libraries that support Microsoft services; or as bad news, in that it shows how many developers are moving towards non-Microsoft platforms in their app deployments.
It was the second time today that de Icaza appeared on the keynote stage. Earlier he stood there with Anders Hejlsberg, the author of C#.
It has been a long journey, from the time when Mono (the open source implementation of .NET founded by de Icaza) was viewed with distrust by Microsoft (as far as I could tell), as an open source competitor to the official version.
Now there is talk of whether Microsoft might acquire Xamarin – of which there is no news here at Build, I should emphasise.
There are also good news / bad news interpretations to MS’s dropping the OEM price for Windows to $0 for small devices. It seems like a good way to help drive adoption, but it also screams desperation. If someone offers me something for free, I normally wonder if that’s what it’s really worth.
MS is definitely making an effort, but unfortunately they are probably 2-3 years late with this. Like the German or French invasions of Russia, after several important errors, the eventual outcome was decided, even though much more fighting and dying lay ahead.
I think it should be interpreted as a desire from a lot of developers to build for win store but with a story to keep the business happy with reach. Today it is super hard to convince anyone to put money on win store apps, it comes when they others are done, maybe. Which means you have to resort to dev tools that are not as complete.
The .Net toolchain is far more productive which is why developers still hang on and try to forget the big deception with Silverlight.
This can’t be anything but good for Ms and it seems to me as a new Ms came out this build, a Ms focused on technology again, enabling creativity not controlling it, a Ms focusing on an open platform for developer choice and moving current investment forward, they even brought dx12 up and wpf, and spent time on they keynote showing vb6.. maybe they have finally understood that new developers don’t flock towards the platform unless you keep your existing ones happy, those that have huge investments in their old technology.
I hope they keep this new momentum up, the icing would have been a new migration story of Silverlight into universal windows apps, just some help for those trapped, which has caused serious trust issues, especially up the chain for future investments. Ms need a, we have you covered, sorry we messed up, long term investments are safe with us, apology story.
The drop in price is necessary, all and any business today in the embedded space predominantly choose Linux, mostly because it has no licensing and no hassles, if they are serious about getting a for print there, which is a trampoline up the stacks, they need his, and they need reference boards and Dev kits in the s online store, much like they have surfaces as a reference.