1 Introducing .NET MAUI
This chapter covers:
- What .NET MAUI is
- How MAUI fits into .NET
- Why you would want to use .NET MAUI to build desktop and mobile apps
- Writing cross-platform UIs
The dream of write once, run anywhere (WORA) cross-platform software began in earnest in 1996 with the release of the first version of Java by Sun Microsystems. Before Java, software developers used to write their code against APIs provided by the operating system. Java was different – not only was it a new programming language, but it was also a runtime with its own set of APIs, allowing developers to ignore the target platform or operating system. Sun provided a runtime for nearly every available operating system (called the Java Virtual Machine, or JVM), which meant that developers didn’t have to worry about whether they were building a Windows application or a Linux application or a Mac application. They were building a Java application.