As I’ve mentioned before, I’m taking 6-9 months out of the rat race so I can do my own thing, including learning some new skills to take into the world of work. The skills in question are HTML/Javascript and Xamarin.
Javascript is becoming ubiquitous, it’s the assembly language of the web and for any startup being able to create a web site or web application is important. I’m going to learn it alongside Node, HTML and all the tooling in that space. It’s hard actually as there is so many frameworks, so many tools to learn so I’m going to focus on the MEAN stack. There is an excellent Pluralsight course on this - worth a watch if you have a subscription (what do you mean you don’t - get one already). I’ll be using this to create my web site - more information coping soon.
Xamarin is breaking ground in cross platform application development. Not content with allowing C# apps to be run on iOS and Android they went on to introduce Xamarin.Forms to allow cross platform UI development using XAML. I’ve been developing in C# for the past 7 years so it’s the natural next step for developing in the mobile space. Having done desktop applications for years in WPF it make sense to expand my skills to include mobile.
Why is this post entitled waiting? I’m waiting for my Xamarin license. They’ve really helpfully put together a subscription that matches both my needs and my meagre unemployed person budget and I’m just waiting for the invoice. It’s been a few days now and although I appreciate they are busy and these things take time, I’m itching to get started! My own impatience is getting the better of me. I know I can develop using the 30 day trial in Xamarin studio but I’m licensing a version that includes Xamarin for Visual Studio and I really can’t wait to produce an app in VS for my iPhone.