Leverage your Android development expertise to build Windows Phone applications (via WindowsTeamBlog)

How can you leverage your Android development expertise to build Windows
Phone applications?

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:

• Android to Windows Phone API mapping tool
  see
  details below
• “Windows Phone 7 Guide for Android Application
  Developers” white paper,
  90+ pages organized in 7 chapters

Windows Phone API mapping tool: now includes Android

We’ve added Android to the Windows Phone API mapping
tool to help developers find their way around the Windows Phone platform. Think
of the API mapping tool as being like a translation dictionary. For example,
let’s say that you’re planning a vacation to France. Since you don’t speak the
language, you’ll bring a pocket travel dictionary. Having this tool will surely
help you get an idea about what you are ordering from a restaurant menu, but
you’ll have no idea what the actual recipe is — nor will you be able to have a
conversion in French with the server! But it’s a great learning tool to make the
first steps.
Give it a try!

API mapping tool: 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!

Getting help when porting your applications?

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.

What’s next?

We are continuing to expand the scope of the API Mapping tool and the
technical guidance. Our next step is to include the Mango features into the API
Mapping tool (planned for this summer).

As mentioned above, we’re open for feedback and if you want to share your
“porting” story let me know, we already have a few, like the Groundspeak Geocaching app.