What I miss in Xamarin.Forms?
Nothing. All good there. Sparkling? Maybe.
Context:
After spending some time learning Amazing and Sparkling Flutter, got back with some rethinking loved and Amazing and Powerful Xamarin.Forms.
Will declarative UI make me faster and more productive?
NO, it is just another notation. Main boost in making UI for Flutter was Hot Restart and Hot Reload which are now supported in Xamarin.FORMS.
Is MVVM bad?
NO, it’s a well know, proven and valued pattern.
Sparkling UI
Flutter deliver nicely wrapped controls as:
Equivalents from Xamarin community:
FutureBuilder:
Hero:
That enables new technology incomers to deliver really nice and sparking UI almost out of box.
Open question here, how much customization is needs to deliver those controls, sure they are but how much work developer need to put to deliver requested by customer UI?
In other words if customer is asking from 100% customized UI how much is left from delivered default UI?
The Inclusion: .NET 5: Web and UWP
Popularity of mobile platforms have up and downs iOS, Android and fallen knight Windows Phone. Choosing cross-platform is insurance kind of safe passage for platform popularity picks. Now UWP is left a little bit behind in compare iOS and Android, a well as market for web development in .NET is much bigger. Going from web to mobile and from mobile to web is not straight forward, yet. UWP as well as Web PWA as Blazor gain on popularity what means customers are asking for it, what makes NON Mobile.NET software development more attractive to .NET developers.
Brand customer awareness
Mobile development looks as niche in compare big traditional software development. Brand itself is recognizable in .NET developers community as for non .NET frameworks as Flutter are poorly noticeable in non mobile .NET developers. Customers don’t know what is cross-platform or hybrid, lucky from Xamarin is Microsoft brand what is door opener in most cases. On other hand .NET itself is very recognizable brand I’m extremely happy that Xamarin will be part of .NET5 what solve many marketing issues.
Conclusion
All can be achieved in Xamarin.Forms by experienced developer, but there are few nice controls that make Flutter UI more accessible for new comers.
Wishful thinking to fill little gap Xamarin.Forms would need few new nice and easy controls that come from Xamarin not from community which can be easily used by inexperienced or startup developer.
But if want fast effect and don’t waste much time on custom UI, than use