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Given all the grief expressed in the post and the comments, it seems like if someone architected a really nice, developer-friendly native mobile API for any pla

Given all the grief expressed in the post and the comments, it seems like if someone architected a really nice, developer-friendly native mobile API for any platform you would get droves of devs flocking to it.... Despite the two major players, the market seems wide open as long as they focused on the development experience like what Matz did for Ruby... Programmers are customers too! :)

JamesBarney 10y ago
I've heard a lot of praise for the Windows phone developer experience, but what really matters is the audience. Dev's flock to the audience. Even just a small pay difference will dev's to deal with the most terrible of developer experiences(ex. Sharepoint)
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I do hobby coding between Android and WP, and do love the experience. Microsoft might have lost the mobile war, but they are on good track to win the hybrid laptops one.
- andromeduck 10y ago
  Well it's good as long as you're okay with being on Windows but that can be a pretty big barrier
naiyt 10y ago
React Native is getting there. It's still early software with a lot of problems but it has a lot of promise. My anecdotal experience as someone learning mobile development was that React Native was a lot easier to pick up and learn than native Android development. Despite a large number of issues the developer experience has been really slick and I've been able to iterate much faster. Give it a couple of years and I think it'll be exactly what you're asking for.
- lacker 10y ago
  it has a lot of promise Glad to hear it ;-) I'm curious, what have been the main issues for you?
  - pitaj 10y ago
    Probably the fact that it's still in active development, so there are breaking changes.
    - pier25 10y ago
      Also the terrible docs
      - lacker 10y ago
        I'm interested in improving these docs. Can you point to one area that you think is particularly terrible?

JamesBarney 10y ago

I've heard a lot of praise for the Windows phone developer experience, but what really matters is the audience. Dev's flock to the audience. Even just a small pay difference will dev's to deal with the most terrible of developer experiences(ex. Sharepoint)

pjmlp 10y ago
I do hobby coding between Android and WP, and do love the experience. Microsoft might have lost the mobile war, but they are on good track to win the hybrid laptops one.
andromeduck 10y ago
Well it's good as long as you're okay with being on Windows but that can be a pretty big barrier

naiyt 10y ago

React Native is getting there. It's still early software with a lot of problems but it has a lot of promise. My anecdotal experience as someone learning mobile development was that React Native was a lot easier to pick up and learn than native Android development. Despite a large number of issues the developer experience has been really slick and I've been able to iterate much faster. Give it a couple of years and I think it'll be exactly what you're asking for.

lacker 10y ago
it has a lot of promise Glad to hear it ;-) I'm curious, what have been the main issues for you?
- pitaj 10y ago
  Probably the fact that it's still in active development, so there are breaking changes.
  - pier25 10y ago
    Also the terrible docs
    - lacker 10y ago
      I'm interested in improving these docs. Can you point to one area that you think is particularly terrible?