Xamarin

I really loved Apache Flex, but it fell behind and seems to be going away.

Android Studio and IOS SDK are some of the competing programming methods for mobile development that competes with Xamarin. However, these utilize other programming languages like Java, or Objective C. In addition, these methods may be used more directly with Android or IOS programming and are not cross-platform compatible. Meaning, you have to develop different codes/programs for each different platform such as web and desktop apps, etc.

Xamarin allows us to natively code against IOS and Android as opposed to just putting a Skin over it. Because of this native code stack the performance on Xamarin is off the charts better. You can really see the performance when you are using native phone features like GPS, Phone or Camera

As I said before: Code sharing and using existing skills was the most important factor to choose Xamarin. With phonegap code sharing exists but business logic must be written in JS.

Coming from a .NET background I always wanted to like Xamarin. Now that Microsoft bought them and made the product available to all, it's a no brainer.

In Native app development we need to employ specialized developers solving some business problems in different technologies. Xamarin solves that problem to some extent delivering a native application experience. Hybrid has the same code base but suffers from lack of performance.

Xamarin runs natively on MacOS, and the debugger and other integration and auto-complete tools are far better than Eclipse for C# .NET. It also carries much of the plugin/add-on capabilities that are so desirable on Atom. Eclipse is a better for generalized software development, provided a developer is comfortable switching between the IDE the command line for certain parts of their workflow, like building, package management, or debugging. But for C# .NET development on MacOS specifically, Xamarin is the best product I've used for the job.

None of the HTML-based cross-platform solutions can easily provide a native look and feel like Xamarin can. I've had to rescue multiple organizations that went down this path only to be disappointed with the results.

Apache Cordova is nothing more than a HTML Web VIew App. I've built an app using Cordova and it was a mess. With Xamarin, you get the platform level capabilities, which make the performance, in theory, no different than real native development. Cordova is not suitable for any non-simple app.

Xamarin is a good platform compared to Cordova, as it gives better API access, documentation and customer support as well as a robust community. It allows you to develop code using native Visual Studio and helps the developer to reuse the codebase for different platforms, versus Apache Cordova.