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Re:The future of C# and Visual Basic [video] by jdhawk on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:58AM (#8551417)
There is still a degree of that, depending on how you structure the application, and how much of it is reliant on your UI layer vs backend business logic.

Xamarin.Forms is their solution - common UI components wrapped in a generic layer.

They have a nice way to blend Xamarin.Forms, native UI controls and library projects that is getting much better, but still a bit of a pain.

They true value in my eye is that I only have to be proficient in one language, and they have very good documentation.

I still need to have a firm understanding of the API's for both Android, iOS, and WinPhone if I want to make a non-Xamarin.Forms application, but at least I'm not mentally shifting between 3 languages.

Re:The future of C# and Visual Basic [video] by Alphasite_ on Monday November 03, 2014 @12:36PM (#8552135)
Picking up languages really isn't that te key, it's always been the library that's hard, so I can't say I can see the value if it's just that.
Re:The future of C# and Visual Basic [video] by jbergens on Tuesday November 04, 2014 @03:13AM (#8555557)
I suppose the value is that you don't have to rewrite your application logic multiple times. That takes time even if you're fluent in all languages. It is also a duplicatio which increases the risk of later bugs due to not doing all changes in all copies.
Re:The future of C# and Visual Basic [video] by jdhawk on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @09:48AM (#8561940)
Exactly - and as a after work only developer, the less I have to do over, the less I have to consult the docs, the more comfortable I am with a single tool, the more productive I become.