Xamarin: Moving On - with Mike Irving

It is a privilege to welcome back Mike Irving to Liverpool to do a talk on Xamarin. Mike started programming as a young child on the Dragon 32 microcomputer, and later on a ZX Spectrum. Professionally, Mike started out in web development on the Microsoft Stack. However, in more recent times he has been heavily involved in mobile development, both native and cross-platform. Though regularly coding Swift, Kotlin, and JavaScript, C# / .NET has remained a constant throughout his career.

Talk
We will take a look at how Xamarin evolved, the different things that ‘Xamarin’ came to mean (Native Apps, Class Libraries, much later Xamarin. Forms.. but also Xamarin Studio, plus tooling like HockeyApp / App Center and more) ..

• Advantages of the Xamarin avenues, but also pitfalls and problems.
• Where to turn now on each of those paths (not necessarily a case of ‘choose .NET MAUI’):
• Native Apps in C#, but also a look at Swift and Kotlin, discussing the advantages of either approach
• For Cross Platform: .NET MAUI, Uno Platform, Avalonia UI, or non-C# offerings.
• IDE choices, and replacements for tooling like App Center

Food
We have a selection of food available including Vegan options but if you'd like to know more please drop one of our organisers a message before the event via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)
If you would need assistance to leave the building in the event of an evacuation then please let us know via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)

Schedule
Doors open from 18:00
Pizza at 18:30
Intro and welcome 18:40
Speaker from 18:50
Close ~21:00 (Don't feel bad if you have to leave early for a train/bus/lift home - no one will be offended)

Travel
Train - James Street station is a 2-minute walk from the Lab. Liverpool Lime Street is approx 15-20 minutes walking distance.
Driving - Underground parking is available.
Bicycle - Cycle rack available.