So you want to build a mobile app? Your developer zen will quickly be threatened by the plethora of ways you can go about building a modern, cross-platform mobile app today. The below illustration shows an assortment of just a few of the technologies that you can use and the most common frameworks/platforms used for each.

This is what we have done to ourselves over the last 10 years. Choice is a good thing for developers, except that too much choice can become a little crippling.

On a positive note, the choice of technology stack becomes much easier once you decide to focus on what matters most – your skills and expertise. In today’s age, you really want to build truly cross-platform mobile apps from single codebase and preferably have the app be native to each platform. If your developer background is .NET, you’ll possibly lean towards using C# with Xamarin.

Xamarin lets you to build modern cross-platform mobile apps using your .NET skills. You write C#/XAML and your code gets cross-compiled down to native bits on each platform. This article walks you through some essential tooling that you should have in your arsenal for Xamarin development, as well as how to jumpstart your app with some polished UI.

Full article over @ Telerik Developer Network.