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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. Sass vs Xamarin

Sass vs Xamarin

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Xamarin
Xamarin
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.5K
Votes785
Sass
Sass
Stacks44.8K
Followers32.2K
Votes3.0K
GitHub Stars15.3K
Forks2.2K

Sass vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

## Introduction
In the realm of web development, Sass and Xamarin are two popular tools that serve different purposes. Understanding the key differences between these two technologies is essential for developers to choose the right tool for their specific needs.

1. **Language Type**: Sass is a preprocessor scripting language that is interpreted or compiled into CSS. In contrast, Xamarin is a framework used for developing native mobile applications for iOS, Android, and Windows using C# and .NET.

2. **Primary Use**: Sass is primarily used for creating and maintaining stylesheets in web development projects to make CSS code more efficient and maintainable. On the other hand, Xamarin is mainly utilized for cross-platform mobile app development, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms.

3. **Community Support**: Sass has a large and active community of developers who contribute to its libraries, tools, and resources, making it easier for developers to find solutions to their problems. While Xamarin also has a supportive community, it is relatively smaller compared to Sass due to its specific focus on mobile app development.

4. **Technology Stack**: Sass is integrated into web development workflows as a tool for writing CSS with enhanced features like variables, mixins, and nesting. In contrast, Xamarin operates within the Microsoft technology stack, leveraging C# and .NET for building robust and scalable mobile applications.

5. **Platform Compatibility**: Sass is compatible with any CSS-compatible browser and can be used across different platforms without any restrictions. Xamarin, however, is constrained by the platform support provided by the Xamarin framework, limiting the deployment of apps to platforms supported by Xamarin.

6. **Learning Curve**: Sass is relatively easier to learn for developers familiar with CSS and provides a smooth transition into using advanced features for stylesheet management. On the other hand, Xamarin requires a steeper learning curve due to its intricate framework and the need for proficiency in C# programming.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between Sass and Xamarin is crucial for developers to make informed decisions based on their specific project requirements.

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Advice on Xamarin, Sass

William
William

CEO at Stealth Startup

Feb 11, 2021

Needs adviceonlambdalambdaAmazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDBWindowsWindows

We are developing an AWS IoT app for large boats. The IoT devices have sensors all over the boat for engine oil pressure, position, water depth, fuel level, crew location, etc. When the boat has internet, we interact with AWS cloud using lambda and Amazon DynamoDB. When the boat is offshore, the captain and crew still need normal and emergency alerts and real-time sensor information. The crew might have an Android or IoS phone or a Windows or macOS PC to receive alerts and interact with sensors. We may use the AWS GreenGrasss edge computing solution and either MQTT or HTML for that function.

Question: We want to develop a cross-platform client to run on Windows, Mac, Android, IOS, and possibly Linux. We are primarily Python programmers, so PyQt or Kivy are options for us, but we have heard good things about React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, and others. We think an AWS Greengrass core on an RPI4 could communicate to the client with MQTT or a local webserver with a client web interface.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

464k views464k
Comments
Anonymous
Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 17, 2020

Needs adviceonSassSassStylusStylusPostCSSPostCSS

Originally, I was going to start using @{Sass}|tool:1171| with Parcel, but then I learned about @{Stylus}|tool:1172|, which looked interesting because it can get the property values of something directly instead of through variables, and @{PostCSS}|tool:3339|, which looked interesting because you can customize your Pre/Post-processing. Which tool would you recommend?

547k views547k
Comments
Ru_Co
Ru_Co

Sep 9, 2020

Review

Hi Manish,

Well between those 2 options (Kotlin and Flutter), Flutter would be the only one that would allow you to make your app for both Apple and Android. Kotlin is for Android only. But there are other crossplatform development frameworks besides Flutter. Which one is the best for you would depend on the app you want to create and your current expertises and preferences. I've marked a few alternatives in my answer.

126 views126
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Xamarin
Xamarin
Sass
Sass

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.

Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.

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
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
15.3K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
2.2K
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
44.8K
Followers
1.5K
Followers
32.2K
Votes
785
Votes
3.0K
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
    Complexity
  • 3
    Scalability
Pros
  • 613
    Variables
  • 594
    Mixins
  • 466
    Nested rules
  • 410
    Maintainable
  • 300
    Functions
Cons
  • 6
    Needs to be compiled

What are some alternatives to Xamarin, Sass?

Ionic

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.

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Less

Less

Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Stylus

Stylus

Stylus is a revolutionary new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

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