If you are like me, you probably are very familiar with Android Studio. Android Studio is a tool which allows you to develop applications using Eclipse, C++ and HTML. When developing applications with Android Studio, you will have the option of using the Xamarin Tools which allows you to use your IDE to build the code for the Android platform. As an added bonus, you will be able to run the application on the Android mobile device, which is nice for testing purposes.
But there is a problem if you want to download the free version of Android Studio. The problem is that the application will only work with Google's mobile platform, which is called Android. You will have no options for other platforms like iOS, and Windows Phone. So if you are a Windows user, or plan on using your development machine to build and run the application, you will have to download a different application.
Luckily, there is an alternative to downloading the paid application and get access to the Windows platform, the Native Client Project. This application is a freely available application that is used for creating native applications. What it does is allows you to use the Windows command line and tools to create the Android Studio application which can be used on the Windows platform. This application is also very easy to use, has all the features that you would expect from an IDE, and allows you to create applications that are natively supported by Windows.