Xamarin Evolve 2016

This year was my first attendee to the Xamarin Evolve conference thanks to my company Orange Applications for Business.

University

During the two first days, I followed the lessons from the Xamarin.University team which were very instructive! I learned on several advanced technical topics such as memory management, build options.

Keynotes

Day 01 : Main

The main announcements that I fell in love with during the first keynote was :

1. Xamarin.Forms Previewer : Oh My God, finally a designer for Xamarin.Forms! We will be able to see how our XAML renders without the need to deploy the application on a device/simulator. For me, this was the most exciting announcement this year.
2. Open Sourcing : all the Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms code will be available on GitHub. More info
3. Remote iOS Simulator for Visual Studio : you will be able have a real-time stream of the iOS simulator from your Windows device.
4. Xamarin.Forms Themes : we will finally be able to have re-usable Themes through multiple applications projects.
5. Test Cloud Live : remote debugging from every device from the Xamarin Test Cloud with a realtime preview f its screen.

But there was other cool new features announced such as :

• Test Recorder for Visual Studio : ability to generate UITests C# code (in Visual Studio) by interacting with a physical device.
• DataPages : dynamic Xamarin.Forms page generation from JSON data. Seems very interesting for quick mockups.

Day 03 : Xammy Awards

Enteprise projects was rewarded during Xammy Awards, and my though was that we must be part of it with Orange Applications for Business and my co-workers next year!

Day 03 : Closing session

A discussion between Steve Wozniak … and Steve Woziak! He explained his vision of technology and the future of it.

Sessions

During two days, a many sessions was presented by Xamarin experts from the company or from the community.

Here a list of sessions I attended to :

• Why Akavache is Fast: How Not to Use SQLite - Paul Betts : clearly one of my favorites! I admire Paul Betts for his amazing libraries (Refit is probably his best work for me) and this session was really fun to listen to : how he optimized synchronization scenarios for his library Akavache and how he improved his library.
• Optimizing App Performance with Xamarin.Forms - Jason Smith : a set of tricks to greatly improve your Xamarin.Forms performance from the leader of the product development team. Very interesting to listen to his advices because he knows very well how all the layout is realized by the framework.
• Creating Custom Layouts in Xamarin.Forms - Jason Smith : another Session about Xamarin.Forms, add guess what, again with Jason. The subject wasn’t covered too much so it was great to understand how layout works in Xamarin.Forms.
• Test Driven Xamarin Development - Jessy Liberty : a great introduction : if you’re not familiar with TDD I highly recommend you to watch this session.
• Everyone Can Create Beautiful Apps with Material Design - James Montemagno, Jérémie Laval : demonstration of how to create material designed apps with Xamarin tools.
• Using Xamarin.Forms with F# - Rachel Reese : to be honest, I went to this session to discover F#, but it was more a feedback of how it helped Rachel to improve er productivity.
• Why You Should Be Building Better Mobile Apps with Reactive Programming# - Michael Stonis : a cool introduction to Reactive programming and how it can help you managing.

Watch all the sessions

All the sessions are now available from the official website. Go watch all of them now, there’s awesome conferences from wonderful people!

Events

Many great events was hosted by Xamarin, and by far the most amazing was the party at Universal Studios : be able to do all the rollercoasters and drinking Butter Beer without waiting was so pleasing.

Conclusion

What a great experience it was : great talks, very advanced technical topics, mood, audience.

See you next year Nat! ;)