Transitioning to Xamarin from Objective-C

Objective-C developers coming to Xamarin can take advantage of the Xamarin.iOS platform to create reusable C# code that can be shared with Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.Mac and various Windows platforms. However, you need not throw away all the investments you have made in Objective-C. Xamarin offers a technology called bindings that let you reuse Objective-C libraries within a Xamarin.iOS application. Additionally, Objective-C developers are often surprised to learn that C# isn’t as far from Objective-C as they think it is, while at the same time discovering all the great language features C# has to offer.

To make the transition to Xamarin.iOS and C# smoother, we’ve created a new Xamarin for Objective-C Developers section in our developer center to serve as a starting point for Objective-C developers to learn about Xamarin.

In it, you’ll find a C# Primer for Objective-C Developers that compares and contrasts several language features between Objective-C and C#. Also, we’ve created a new iOS Binding Walkthrough that shows step-by-step how to make an existing, open-source Objective-C library, InfColorPicker, available to C# via bindings.

We also have other documents that include detailed information on Xamarin.iOS binding technology as well as a wealth of information that includes our guidance for building cross-platform applications.

We hope you find this information makes it easier to get started with Xamarin.iOS when coming from Objective-C.