It’s not easy interviewing and assessing software developers, especially if the technology isn’t your thing. A Xamarin developer will be able to build cross-platform apps for iOS and Android, but how do you know what to look for? Let’s take a closer look at what Xamarin is and some interview questions that you should be asking candidates.

What Is Xamarin?

Typically, apps will be developed using a platform such as .NET, which has its own

Set of tools and programming languages. Xamarin will extend this platform with even more tools and libraries that have been designed to enable the development of apps not only for iOS and Android but also for Windows, tvOS, watchOS, and MacOS.

What Are the Advantages of Hiring a Xamarin Developer?

Native Performance

Users are able to access apps on iOS or Android and still have the experience they would expect from the preferred operating system. Xamarin developers can also take advantage of native APIs, specifically those with platform-specific capabilities like iBeacons and Android Fragments.

C# Development

For cross-platform apps, a developer will need to know Java, as well as either Swift or Objective C. Xamarin developers only, need to know C# to build Android and iOS apps. C# has other advantages over other programming languages. It is responsive, requires less code, and lambdas are easier in C#.

Speed

As your Xamarin developer only has to develop one app with code logic for iOS and Android, the process is faster. As there is less code, your developer can also often save time with fewer bugs to fix. When it comes to testing, they will also need to write fewer tests.

What Skills Should a Xamarin Developer Have?

Experience with C# and MVVM

We have mentioned above the importance of C# knowledge. Model-View-View-Model is a software design pattern that is often used for cross-platform app development frameworks and candidates should be able to explain the importance of MVVM.

API and Third-Party Libraries

It is essential that candidates have experience working with APIs and third-party libraries as Xamarin offers plenty of support for this. Check work history for this skill.

Reusing Code

Candidates must be experts at reusing code as they will need to take code from one platform to use on the other.

The ability to keep learning

Good qualifications are a start, but the environment is continuously changing, and the right candidate will be willing to keep learning and staying up to date with new solutions.

What Interview Questions to Ask a Xamarin Candidate?

It is more than likely that you will have some questions that are specific to your own business but below you will find some questions that are ideal to find out more about the candidate’s Xamarin knowledge.

What different ways can you create a Xamarin app?

The candidate should be able to talk about the traditional method that provides direct access to certain APIs. This will entail platforms using Xamarin.iOS and Xamin.Android. Alternatively, they can use Xamarin.forms with either Portable Libraries or Shared Projects.

Can you describe the Xamarin.form’s lifecycle?

The lifecycle of Xamarin.form is the complete process from start to finish. The most important thing a candidate can talk about are calls like On Start, OnSleep, and OnResume.

What are Jagged Arrays in C#? How can you initialize it?

As an expert in C#, your candidate should be able to tell you that a jagged array if an array of arrays. For an example of how to initialize it, you could ask them to show you or at least write it down.

What are boxing and unboxing?

While both are types of conversion in C#, boxing converts value data type to the object or interface data. Unboxing extracts the value type from the object or interface.