7 ms·

Don't we have enough cross platform dev kits anyways?I fail to see the need for so many more platforms.The state of the ART/DVM is going to become like that of

by shade23 11y ago

Don't we have enough cross platform dev kits anyways?I fail to see the need for so many more platforms.The state of the ART/DVM is going to become like that of the JVM. Maybe as devices become more powerful,it would be capable of handling such needs.But why would you want to develop such apps which you would have to wait till the native platforms release updates which are then ported to these platforms.Android updates happen every 3 months.Maintaining evergreen apps in such cycles is a task in itself. I understand the evolution of Javascript based frameworks considering the large number of developers available.But now days you have to spend more time learning a framework in comparison to developing something with it. The only feature which seemed to grab my attention was : > Can I update my app over the network, outside of the Play Store? Yes. On Android, you can update your app over the network (via HTTP), without first publishing to the Play Store. This can be useful because it doesn’t bother the user with a notification, ensures your users are on the latest version, makes it easier to run A/B experiments, and more. This would be extremely useful. But I think there would be a catch to this too.I am actually tired of seeing new frameworks come up everyday,especially orgs like Google.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> Don't we have enough cross platform dev kits anyways? Absolutely not. Right now the choices are very, very small for the platforms you'd actually want to use. React-native, before Flutter, was the only one (that I know of at least) that uses real, native components but uses a different language for orchestrating them. Beyond that everything else is either "shove html in a web view" or the xamarin approach which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is closer to the approach of QT in that it renders all its own controls. We need more options in the first camp, the one where real native components are used but can use a common language across the mobile operating systems. I only wish react-native and this supported Windows Phone. It's such an awesome OS but no one will ever use it because of the lack of apps :(
- insulanian 11y ago
  I only wish react-native and this supported Windows Phone. It's such an awesome OS but no one will ever use it because of the lack of apps :( What do you consider awesome in Windows Phone comparing to Android and iOS?
  - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    > What do you consider awesome in Windows Phone comparing to Android and iOS? So I only have experience using a cheap phone I bought from Amazon last year (it was a $35 Windows Phone that surprisingly worked very well) but it has a lot of things to love about it - Smooth OS even on older / cheaper phones. Can't always say the same with Android. - It does notifications the right way in that it has updates on the app tiles in addition to the drop down. So if you dismiss it from the drop down the number will still be present in the app (I constantly dismissed all notifications in Android and it would take some time to figure out what app had a notification I accidentally dismissed). - The development environment is second to none. It's so easy to get started, build, deploy and your app can work on a mobile phone, tablet, computer and even a freaking gaming console. Single software project! - Live tiles are awesome; basically a nice and easy way to do widgets that iOS sorely lacks but forces them to be more uniform so you don't have oddly styled widgets like you run into on occasion in Android - Cortana is more open than Google Now and Siri and was the first assistant that could help you with things regarding contacts and locations ("Remind me to tell my wife I love her the next time I talk to her" works) I'm not disillusioned though; I'm pretty sure it lacks stuff that some of the other OSes have I just don't really remember off hand as it's been a year since I've used it. But it's an incredible little OS that, with the newest phones, you can plugin in a monitor and keyboard and bam, you're using the same applications in a desktop view (so it's not enlarging the mobile app; you get the same menus that you get on the desktop). If it had most of the apps I use every day I would move to it.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Comparing with Android. - C++ is a first class language on the platform, not constrained like the NDK - C++ also gets first class tooling not the second class treatment Google gives C++ devs - WinRT is a very nice framework as the second coming of COM - .NET is compiled to native code AOT - Visual Studio rocks in debugging capabilities, specially for parallel and graphics debugging. - Less resource hungry as Android - XAML and its tooling (Expression Blend) for UI design - Common runtime, develop WinRT components and use them from any language that understands WinRT.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  «Beyond that everything else is either "shove html in a web view" or the xamarin approach which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is closer to the approach of QT in that it renders all its own controls.» Xamarin uses native components, in a similar manner to react-native. (Or more accurately, the other way round, Xamarin pre-dating react-native.) I also wish react-native or NativeScript would actually provide/finish Windows Mobile/UWP support, but I'm not currently holding my breath. (That said, at least Windows supports JS as a native build stack so maybe you don't really need react-native/NativeScript to support Windows, you just need some glue scripts...)
  - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the heads up! I was invited to their original Alpha (before they called it Xamarin) years ago and I could have sworn it did not work like that back then. So I'm assuming it's either changes or I'm mistaken.
    - WorldMaker 11y ago
      So far as I've followed Xamarin it has always been about native components, but they've not always been great with marketing that. The waters are also muddied a bit in that they have their Xamarin.Forms library now which is an abstraction layer over top of the native components (but at the end of the chain, still defers to the native components to actually do the work). It's easy to confuse Xamarin.Forms with a non-native toolkit, but it too is just a wrapper over top native tools.
      - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
        Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification!
kaendfinger 11y ago
I'm of the opinion that the more the better. It's not about choosing a dominant or #1 framework, it's about what works best for what you are doing.
invalidname 11y ago
You can do that for ios too with Codename One. Apparently we know more about ios development than the flutter team...

by shade23 11y ago

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

> Don't we have enough cross platform dev kits anyways? Absolutely not. Right now the choices are very, very small for the platforms you'd actually want to use. React-native, before Flutter, was the only one (that I know of at least) that uses real, native components but uses a different language for orchestrating them. Beyond that everything else is either "shove html in a web view" or the xamarin approach which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is closer to the approach of QT in that it renders all its own controls. We need more options in the first camp, the one where real native components are used but can use a common language across the mobile operating systems. I only wish react-native and this supported Windows Phone. It's such an awesome OS but no one will ever use it because of the lack of apps :(

insulanian 11y ago
I only wish react-native and this supported Windows Phone. It's such an awesome OS but no one will ever use it because of the lack of apps :( What do you consider awesome in Windows Phone comparing to Android and iOS?
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > What do you consider awesome in Windows Phone comparing to Android and iOS? So I only have experience using a cheap phone I bought from Amazon last year (it was a $35 Windows Phone that surprisingly worked very well) but it has a lot of things to love about it - Smooth OS even on older / cheaper phones. Can't always say the same with Android. - It does notifications the right way in that it has updates on the app tiles in addition to the drop down. So if you dismiss it from the drop down the number will still be present in the app (I constantly dismissed all notifications in Android and it would take some time to figure out what app had a notification I accidentally dismissed). - The development environment is second to none. It's so easy to get started, build, deploy and your app can work on a mobile phone, tablet, computer and even a freaking gaming console. Single software project! - Live tiles are awesome; basically a nice and easy way to do widgets that iOS sorely lacks but forces them to be more uniform so you don't have oddly styled widgets like you run into on occasion in Android - Cortana is more open than Google Now and Siri and was the first assistant that could help you with things regarding contacts and locations ("Remind me to tell my wife I love her the next time I talk to her" works) I'm not disillusioned though; I'm pretty sure it lacks stuff that some of the other OSes have I just don't really remember off hand as it's been a year since I've used it. But it's an incredible little OS that, with the newest phones, you can plugin in a monitor and keyboard and bam, you're using the same applications in a desktop view (so it's not enlarging the mobile app; you get the same menus that you get on the desktop). If it had most of the apps I use every day I would move to it.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Comparing with Android. - C++ is a first class language on the platform, not constrained like the NDK - C++ also gets first class tooling not the second class treatment Google gives C++ devs - WinRT is a very nice framework as the second coming of COM - .NET is compiled to native code AOT - Visual Studio rocks in debugging capabilities, specially for parallel and graphics debugging. - Less resource hungry as Android - XAML and its tooling (Expression Blend) for UI design - Common runtime, develop WinRT components and use them from any language that understands WinRT.
WorldMaker 11y ago
«Beyond that everything else is either "shove html in a web view" or the xamarin approach which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is closer to the approach of QT in that it renders all its own controls.» Xamarin uses native components, in a similar manner to react-native. (Or more accurately, the other way round, Xamarin pre-dating react-native.) I also wish react-native or NativeScript would actually provide/finish Windows Mobile/UWP support, but I'm not currently holding my breath. (That said, at least Windows supports JS as a native build stack so maybe you don't really need react-native/NativeScript to support Windows, you just need some glue scripts...)
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the heads up! I was invited to their original Alpha (before they called it Xamarin) years ago and I could have sworn it did not work like that back then. So I'm assuming it's either changes or I'm mistaken.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    So far as I've followed Xamarin it has always been about native components, but they've not always been great with marketing that. The waters are also muddied a bit in that they have their Xamarin.Forms library now which is an abstraction layer over top of the native components (but at the end of the chain, still defers to the native components to actually do the work). It's easy to confuse Xamarin.Forms with a non-native toolkit, but it too is just a wrapper over top native tools.
    - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
      Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification!

kaendfinger 11y ago

I'm of the opinion that the more the better. It's not about choosing a dominant or #1 framework, it's about what works best for what you are doing.

invalidname 11y ago

You can do that for ios too with Codename One. Apparently we know more about ios development than the flutter team...