Linux duo land $54m VC Xamarin cash bag

Two leading lights in open source and mobile have landed $54m in funding for their company. Xamarin, founded by Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza in 2011, announced today that it has been awarded the cash in its third funding tranche since July 2012. VCs have now poured a total of $82m into Xamarin, which lets devs build …

[RyokuMas]

Re-write the UI...

"The re-write is in the UI, with devs keeping the core of the database, back-end and workflows. Xamarin claims up to 70 per cent code re-use."

With the advent of Xamarin forms, the figure for code re-use is a lot higher now - 90% plus was the claim at a seminar I went to recently.

No idea how accurate this is - I don't write apps. But for games, the only real platform-specific code I've had to write to date are the wrappers that get the apps started on each OS, and lifecycle event handling code.

[phil dude]

Re: Re-write the UI...

Let's hope the functionality can be patched to bridge "android2linux".....

My own app porting has been restricted to bits of Qt/Java/HTML5 with backend applications.

I'll grab some popcorn...

P.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like C#, and I like Linux, but I don't like Windows.

God, that sounds like an Aldi advert.

[Zola]

Or rewrite nothing with Qt, which is cross-platform

truly open source, and despite being available for free Qt is without the many restrictions imposed by the no-cost version of Xamarin (limited app size, no forms builder, no IDE etc.).

Plus, Qt isn't based on the abject failure that is C#, a language nobody has any time for outside of Microsoft circles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Or rewrite nothing with Qt, which is cross-platform

People who diss one language should always be forced to announce their preference.

So that the rest of us may all laugh derisively.

As in what's your preference? Java? (*giggle, snort*) Obj-C? (*uproarious laughter*) C++ (for cross-platform mobile dev?! *insinuations about your lack of sanity*)

C# is like "Java as it should have been or become" - another MS blunder to not have followed in Sun/Oracle's footsteps and released and supported it on non-Windows, even going so far as leaving Mono/Xamarin in legal limbo for years.

Finding myself, after years, of doing more and more coding again, in the Big Data arena, I had to learn Java. Gods below, it's like C# castrated by a blunt, rusty butter knife. I'm thinking of moving to yet another language, Scala, just too escape that circle of hell.

[Roo]

Re: Or rewrite nothing with Qt, which is cross-platform

"Scala, just too escape that circle of hell."

You are likely to find there is always another circle of hell with Scala. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Mono?

Yes, THAT Mono.

Given how mature, performant and successful Mono on Linux was, I am absolutely certain that this new run at C# on Linux will be a smashing success. There are thousands of widely used and very popular Linux Mono apps waiting to be ported to this new platform. NOT.

[tiger99]

Re: Remember Mono?

Yes, and Miguel, who does seem to be a competent programmer, and for all I know may be a nice guy, utterly wiped out his credibility with the FOSS community. Unfortunately Gnome still has many Mono dependencies. The first thing I do when installing a new Linux distro is to expunge Mono. Fortunately that is rather easy on Kubuntu, as it is not there. But in some distros you end up with 100MB of run-time guff cluttering your RAM, and I have seen performance slow to a crawl on a thumping great quad core.

The Linux kernel has a good and consistent API, as do the main GUI layers such as Xorg etc, so why would anyone need something that emulates a layer that M$ put on top of a complete mess called Windoze, to give it a very slightly better API than bare Windoze? Who needs bloat on top of bloat on top of bug-infested bloat? And all because Sir Bill violated the terms of his Java license, and did not like the court's findings....

I would like to see Miguel applying his time, energy and talent to something much more useful than trying to foist an emulation of backward M$ technology on to those who do not need or want it.