Getting Started
If you are just getting started with Xamarin, you are going to need at least one tool right up front – Visual Studio. Go ahead and head on over to https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/ if you have not already. You can start with the community edition.
If you are a small business, then you might want to checkout some of Microsoft’s starter programs. They can get you up and running on the Professional version for free with access to many of Microsoft’s development tools including credits on Azure. It’s well worth looking into if you are a small business just getting started.
Books
I love books. There are plenty of good books out there that can help you get started.
C#
I’ve been rather partial to the O’Reilly Media series on C#. I also like their handy pocket reference guides. The material is laid out well and hits just the right balance of detail. The cookbook gives you great examples to use and apply in a practical way. I still find myself referring back to these books when coming back to elements I use only rarely.
Xaramarin
For Xamarin, I recommend Charles Petzold’s “Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms”. Charles did a fantastic job laying out how to get started and really use Xamarin.Forms. If you are new to Xamarin, I highly recommend you grab this book and start reading.
Coming Soon
I’ll leave you with these recommendations for now. Come back in the future and I’ll add recommendations for NuGet Packages, Tools, and delve into other languages like ASP, Java, PHP, and SQL.