Book Review: .Net MAUI for C# Developers

Jesse Liberty and Rodrigo Juarez have created this book to guide the reader through all aspects of creating apps with .NET MAUI. It assumes a level of experience with C# and .NET but is not limited to previous Xamarin developers. In fact while Xamarin Forms is mentioned it does not get in the way of the .NET MAUI discussion – this is very much a guide to how to create apps with what is available now.

The style is well structured and yet friendly in tone and throughout the book the code samples follow the creation of a single app from start to finish. Each chapter builds on the last and the code repository which accompanies the book contains branches at each chapter point in the book so that you can drop in at any point.

Importantly the book begins with setting up your development PC with the tools required to complete the app. When discussing configuring Visual Studio, Jesse admits that screens may change with Visual Studio updates – something which is always a hazard when writing a technical book.

While it mainly focuses on XAML and C#, it does venture into creating UI with C# and using fluent syntax to simplify this code. Beyond the .NET MAUI APIs themselves the book covers the Community Toolkit libraries which are a great set of resources beyond the core platform.

A whole chapter is dedicated to MVVM and using the latest MVVM Community Toolkit it shows how to quickly build ViewModels using code generators to handle all the boilerplate code required for properties to support change events. There are lots of notes covering things like naming conventions and project structure. These are both helpful and non-judgmental, recognising different approaches.

Each chapter ends with a clear summary and a set of quiz questions (if that’s your learning style).

Ultimately this is a great resource, both for an existing developer who wants to start with .NET MAUI, or for someone transitioning with prior experience of Xamarin Forms. There are plenty of code snippets and screenshots to illustrate each chapter. I definitely recommend this book if you want to become familiar with .NET MAUI.

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of the eBook. No other consideration was provided for this review or the content thereof.