Java vs Xamarin

Overview

Xamarin

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.5K

Votes785

Java

Stacks148.0K

Followers105.5K

Votes3.7K

Java vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Java and Xamarin. Both Java and Xamarin are popular programming languages used for developing mobile applications. While Java is a general-purpose language, Xamarin is a cross-platform development framework based on the C# programming language.

Syntax and Language: Java is a statically typed, object-oriented programming language with a C-like syntax. It follows a strict syntax and has a large library of classes and methods. On the other hand, Xamarin uses the C# programming language, which is also statically typed and object-oriented. However, C# has a more modern syntax and provides additional language features compared to Java.
Platform Compatibility: Java is primarily used for developing Android applications, although it can also be used for other platforms. Xamarin, on the other hand, is a cross-platform framework that allows developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows. This feature makes Xamarin a preferred choice for developing cross-platform mobile applications.
Development Tools: Java developers can use various integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, or Android Studio to develop Java applications. Xamarin developers, on the other hand, can use Visual Studio, a powerful IDE provided by Microsoft, to develop Xamarin applications. Visual Studio offers a rich set of tools and features specifically designed for Xamarin development.
Code Sharing: Java applications cannot be directly ported to different platforms without significant modifications. However, Xamarin allows developers to share a significant portion of the codebase between different platforms, thanks to its cross-platform nature. This reduces development time and effort, making Xamarin a more efficient choice for cross-platform development.
Performance: Java applications are typically compiled into bytecode and run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which adds a layer of abstraction and may impact performance. Xamarin, on the other hand, uses a just-in-time (JIT) compiler and native libraries to achieve performance comparable to native applications. This makes Xamarin applications fast and efficient, providing a seamless user experience.
Community and Resources: Java has been around for a long time and has a vast community of developers worldwide. As a result, Java developers have access to a wide range of resources, libraries, and online communities for support. Xamarin, being relatively newer, has a smaller community but is growing rapidly. It also has a dedicated community and resources for Xamarin developers.

In summary, Java is a popular general-purpose programming language primarily used for Android development, while Xamarin is a cross-platform development framework based on the C# programming language. Xamarin offers platform compatibility, code sharing capabilities, and efficient performance, making it a preferred choice for cross-platform mobile application development.

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Advice on Xamarin, Java

Erik

Chief Architect at LiveTiles

May 18, 2020

Decided

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

614k views614k

Comments

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k

Comments

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Xamarin	Java
Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.	Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!
Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.;Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.; Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.;Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio- Create, build, debug, and deploy apps in Visual Studio. Or use Xamarin Studio, a fully-featured IDE that is built for mobile app development.;Native UI, Native Performance- Xamarin delivers high performance compiled code with full access to all the native APIs so you can create native apps with device-specific experiences.; Point and Click UI Design- Xamarin provides a world class Android UI designer. Use Apple Xcode UI designer to create interfaces and Storyboards that automatically sync with your Xamarin.iOS project.	-
Statistics
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 148.0K
Followers 1.5K	Followers 105.5K
Votes 785	Votes 3.7K
Pros & Cons
Pros 121 Power of c# on mobile devices 81 Native performance 79 Native apps with native ui controls 73 No javascript - truely compiled code 67 Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms Cons 9 Build times 5 Visual Studio 4 Price 3 Scalability 3 Complexity	Pros 608 Great libraries 446 Widely used 401 Excellent tooling 396 Huge amount of documentation available 334 Large pool of developers available Cons 33 Verbosity 27 NullpointerException 17 Nightmare to Write 16 Overcomplexity is praised in community culture 12 Boiler plate code
Integrations
No integrations available	Spring

What are some alternatives to Xamarin, Java?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

Java vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Syntax and Language: Java is a statically typed, object-oriented programming language with a C-like syntax. It follows a strict syntax and has a large library of classes and methods. On the other hand, Xamarin uses the C# programming language, which is also statically typed and object-oriented. However, C# has a more modern syntax and provides additional language features compared to Java.
Platform Compatibility: Java is primarily used for developing Android applications, although it can also be used for other platforms. Xamarin, on the other hand, is a cross-platform framework that allows developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows. This feature makes Xamarin a preferred choice for developing cross-platform mobile applications.
Development Tools: Java developers can use various integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, or Android Studio to develop Java applications. Xamarin developers, on the other hand, can use Visual Studio, a powerful IDE provided by Microsoft, to develop Xamarin applications. Visual Studio offers a rich set of tools and features specifically designed for Xamarin development.
Code Sharing: Java applications cannot be directly ported to different platforms without significant modifications. However, Xamarin allows developers to share a significant portion of the codebase between different platforms, thanks to its cross-platform nature. This reduces development time and effort, making Xamarin a more efficient choice for cross-platform development.
Performance: Java applications are typically compiled into bytecode and run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which adds a layer of abstraction and may impact performance. Xamarin, on the other hand, uses a just-in-time (JIT) compiler and native libraries to achieve performance comparable to native applications. This makes Xamarin applications fast and efficient, providing a seamless user experience.
Community and Resources: Java has been around for a long time and has a vast community of developers worldwide. As a result, Java developers have access to a wide range of resources, libraries, and online communities for support. Xamarin, being relatively newer, has a smaller community but is growing rapidly. It also has a dedicated community and resources for Xamarin developers.

Java vs Xamarin

Overview

Java vs Xamarin: What are the differences?