Being a polyglot developer II: learning Windows Phone from an Android perspective

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As I wrote in this post “Being a polyglot developer: tools & guidance to help iPhone developers learn Windows Phone 7” about a few weeks ago, I think it is essential to be a “polyglot” developer. And although you might have a preferred language, opening your mind to others will bring considerable value to your abilities and your resume. It’s true that jumping from one platform or language to another can break your habits, but change can be stimulating and will ultimately expand your opportunities.

Today we have released a comprehensive package for Android developers to easily learn Windows Phone and port their app to Microsoft’s phone platform. There’s no magic wand that will do the work for you, but we have put together a great package to help you get started.
The package consists of:

All the details are explained on the Windows Phone Developer blog.

clip_image003I just want to point a few things. Mapping is tedious on-going work. Don’t expect a mapping for all of the APIs, simply because the platforms are built upon different architectures and user interfaces. We’re working on expanding the coverage of the API Mapping tool for both iOS and Android, but there will be some situations where you might be stuck, not knowing what way to port your feature over from iOS or Android to Windows Phone.

We’re willing to help! We have hired the “App Guy” who crawls developer forums aggregating discussions from different locations to answer questions related to porting iOS and Android applications to Windows Phone, but hey, that’s just one guy for now, anybody can help out. Tell us if we’ve missed something and tag your questions/answers so that we can find them (see guidance) and show them off.

Open for feedback

When we opened the API mapping tool, we invited developers to offer up their ideas (http://wp7mapping.uservoice.com) about what mapping we should cover. With this new version including Android, we’ve also introduced the possibility to add comments directly on the existing mapping. So if you want to provide additional details or if you spot something inaccurate, just add a comment, we’re listening!

Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, Sr. Technical Evangelist – Interoperability
@jccim - blogs.msdn.com/interoperability