Choosing between Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms
Xamarin, as a runtime and framework, provides developers with all the necessary tools to create cross-platform applications. In this quest, one of the key goals is to create a codebase with a minimal number of resources and time; another is to decrease the maintenance costs of the project. This is where Xamarin.Forms comes into the picture.
As we explained previously in Chapter 2, Defining Xamarin, Mono, and .NET Standard, by using the Xamarin classic approach, developers can create native applications. With this approach, we aren't really worried about creating a cross-platform application since we are creating an application, since all the target platforms are using the same development tools and language. The shared components between the target platforms would, in this case, be limited to the business logic (that is, view-models) and the data access layer (that is, models). However, if we are dealing with a consumer application...