Appendix B. Using MVVM Light instead of MvvmCross
This book focuses on building cross-platform apps using MVVM, and although the concepts are agnostic to the framework you’re using, my examples focused on the MvvmCross framework. There are a range of different MVVM frameworks, each with their own quirks, features, and ways of doing things. You’ve seen MvvmCross; this appendix looks at a different framework called MVVM Light.
The question of which framework to use has a standard technology answer—it depends! Each framework has its own strengths and weaknesses. MvvmCross is a heavyweight, opinionated framework. It provides a lot for you out of the box, which has the upside of making it easier to get started because you have less code to write, but the downside is that it’s harder to do things that are different from the MvvmCross way. MVVM Light, on the other hand, is much more lightweight and provides only what you need to implement the basics of MVVM. You have to do more yourself, but in return you have more control.