Smith W. - Learning Xamarin Studio

William Smith has been writing on software since 1988, when his parents asked him to make a choice between a school-sponsored trip to Europe (which his elder sister was enjoying at the time), or a computer. Although accused of being short-sighted, William chose the computer and he firmly believes he got the better deal. He began writing about software on the Tandy 1000 SL/2 using Turbo C++ and has been hooked on the technology ever since.

He began his professional career in the environmental field eight years later with degrees in Environmental Science and Business Administration. While working in this field full-time, he started his first business focused on installing and managing small commercial networks and websites. In this role, he saw a need for specialized network analysis tools, so he learned VB.NET and wrote simple console applications for his own use. From there, he continued writing applications as a hobbyist before returning to the University of Maryland for a second Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. While still completing the Computer Science program, he was offered a position with a software development firm based in Pittsburgh, PA, where he spent the next few years working with .NET and Xamarin developing iOS applications. As a result of this experience, he was asked to be a technical reviewer for iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook , Dimitris Tavlikos , Packt Publishing .

William currently works for GIS Inc. in Birmingham, AL, as a Geospatial Developer specializing in native mobile application development. He also owns Websmiths, LLC (www.websmithsllc.com), a consulting firm concentrating on cross-platform mobile application development using Xamarin Studio.

He lives in wild and wonderful West Virginia with his beautiful wife and four sons. He enjoys hunting and fishing with his family, and he still hasn't been to Europe.

I want to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for giving me the opportunity to write this book. I would also like to thank my wife Dorothy for her support and my family for their patience with me as I completed this work.

Ryan Alford is a .NET software engineer who works from home. He has been a .NET developer for over 7 years, with majority of his focus being on C#. In his early years, he worked almost exclusively on WinForms and Windows Mobile. He then started working with ASP.NET, AJAX, and Silverlight. In the past few years, as mobile development really started to take off, he took an interest in Xamarin and MonoTouch.

He was able to help convince management at his workplace to use Xamarin for their upcoming enterprise application on iOS, since the company was using .NET and C# in other projects. It was at this point that he was added to the three-person development team to write the new iOS enterprise application.

He has written and released two Android applications: MotoTorch LED and Phase 10 Score Center. MotoTorch LED has more than 500,000 downloads, and was one of the first applications on Android that used the camera LEDs as a flashlight.

Today, Ryan is rewriting Phase 10 Score Center in Xamarin.Android to ease the development of new features. He is still on his iOS team and continues to add new features to his company's enterprise application.

John Goodwin was born in 1979 on South Korean soil as an American citizen to US Army parents. He moved a lot with his family, eventually spending much of his youth in Washington State.

After meeting his wife Jane, he moved to California, where he soon became employed as a professional software developer for a company in Canoga Park, CA, known as Cyberspace Headquarters, LLC. Working there for several years, he progressed from the lowly new guy to Lead Software Developer, in charge of two, or sometimes three other software developers as well as offshore development projects. The economic downturn for IT companies post 9/11 eventually took its toll, and John looked elsewhere for employment, and also moved with his wife further out of the city.

Next in rural Northern Los Angeles County, he took some teaching opportunities. Then he worked short-term for a Simi Valley factory looking to improve worker efficiencies. Soon, an opening in the City of Los Angeles for a contract software developer made its way to his ears; he interviewed, and started work.

In the housing boom from 2002-2006, it had already been very clear that Southern California's bubble was about to burst. John and Jane sold their home in favor of moving to Lake Royale, where he continued to work for the City of Los Angeles telecommute. After working 7 years for the City of Los Angeles, he started working at CareAnyware doing healthcare-related software for home health and hospice. CareAnyware was soon purchased by Brightree, where he continues to work writing post-acute healthcare software with great immediate teammates and remote teams.

His passion for using technology to create value in the lives of others is mysteriously tolerated by his loving wife. Unable to find a normal way to work out and keep fit, he uses local sprint triathlons (and maybe a half in October 2014) to motivate his workout schedule. You can visit his website: http://johngoodwin.com/

I want to thank my brother and family, mother, and stepfather for their contribution to the family support structure.

Sergio Martnez-Losa del Rincn is a computer engineer who loves programming languages. Since high school, he has been learning about programming and computer interaction. He is always learning and discovers something new every day.