title: Android programming and frameworks / IDEs to use?
body: <p>I'm quite new to Android programming, I'm mainly a .NET guy =)</p>
  
  <p>I've done several projects in Windows Phone, and I feel pretty comfortable with the MVVM pattern, C# and so on
  However, I want to get into Android development, because it's an important platform</p>
  
  <p>I wanted to know what's the best free approach where I can reuse some of my skills to reduce the learning curve</p>
  
  <p>I've been investigating and I saw several options..</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Xamarin seems like the best of everything, were you can use cross platform code using visual studio. This is great, but you have to pay to use it (even if I use the free version, I may want to publish some apps later, but don't want to spend that amount of money just to do a couple of apps on my own). So I'd say it's out of the queestion</li>
  <li>I've seen something called MVVM Cross, however I don't know if that requires Xamarin or something else to work?</li>
  <li>If I use pure android development frameworks, what's recommended? I've tried Android Studio, which is not that bad as eclipse, but compared to visual studio it has a long way to go. However it seems that the only way to use visual studio and android is to use xamarin..</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Also, is there any approach to android programming that's the best? (as MVVM is the best for windows phone apps and the pattern embraced my microsoft)</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>