In the previous post, we installed two virtual machines, one for Windows and one for Mac. Here, we install Xamarin and Visual Studio on each environment, and jump right into a code tutorial or two.
It's pretty straightforward to install Xamarin, but the installer does take a long time.
In each dev environment, go to this URL; it will autodetect your environment and give you the appropriate download:
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download
Follow the prompts until you have Visual Studio installed. The Windows installer gives you more opportunity to select options, just make sure you get the mobile App development options selected, and maybe throw in some C# tools as well.
When you're ready to start coding, I found this tutorial to be a great intro. The presentation is well organized and covers the best set of topics to get your feet wet. It's a selected portion of a much larger (7.5 hours) course, in case you want to dive in all the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93ZU6j59wL4
However, if you know nothing about coding, you'll be wise to start with the prequel to that video, which introduces you to beginner code concepts: