What is Xamarin Studio?
Xamarin Studio is a free, open source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) used for building mobile applications. It allows developers to leverage their existing skills in C# and the .NET framework to write native iOS, Android, and Windows apps using a single codebase and programming language.
Some key features and benefits of Xamarin Studio include:
- Supports coding apps in C# with .NET bindings to native iOS, Android, and Windows SDKs
- Built-in emulators and simulators for testing apps without physical devices
- Live Player feature to test changes in real-time on physical devices
- Integrated with Visual Studio for teams working across multiple IDEs
- Flexible licensing options including a free community edition
- Integrated debugging, profiling tools, and designers
- Supports third party libraries like SQLite, JSON.NET, and more
- Built on MonoDevelop, bringing a lightweight, fast IDE
Xamarin Studio allows .NET developers to use their existing skills to write truly native mobile apps for major platforms. With Xamarin and Xamarin Studio, you can share up to 90% of your code across platforms. This allows faster development times and easier maintenance with a single code base.
Microsoft Visual Studio, Apache NetBeans, PyCharm, Code::Blocks, Eclipse, Lazarus, Bloodshed Dev-C++, Xcode, Qt Creator, Aptana Studio, KDevelop, Apache Cordova are some alternatives to Xamarin Studio.