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Good. I won't miss their stupid branding (http://developer.symbian.org/ http://developer.symbian.org/). I won't miss their slow app signing (http://twitter.co

Good. I won't miss their stupid branding (http://developer.symbian.org/ http://developer.symbian.org/). I won't miss their slow app signing (http://twitter.com/buddycloud/status/13062324669 http://twitter.com/buddycloud/status/13062324669 (ended up taking 6 weeks)). I won't miss all the crap we went through to get buddycloud working on this godforsaken platform (good work @incrediblepants). It could have been so good. But Nokia dithered around opening the platform. Even with an open platform, how many hackers really want to look at some long-closed source code and start fixing strangers bugs? Meh! Had the platform had gained adoption amongst hackers with an ecosystem comparable with Android, writing and debugging code on it was still at least 5x slower than iOS or Android and about as enjoyable as pulling fingernails with pliars. Then you were fighting back up against a terrible widget-set and UI (http://n8fail.tumblr.com/ http://n8fail.tumblr.com/). Yes, I know the "but Nokia sells more phones blah". A big ship will also keep drifting for 10km after its propellor has fallen off. On the other hand, working on Symbian has been a good example of where concentrating on niches can reap benefits; Symbian never received the hype that some other platforms have enjoyed and did allow buddycloud to gain about 500k users that were underserved by the dearth of decent social and location apps on the platform. That's been a win for us. This article is about Mr Williams leaving. The writing has been on the wall for ages - all the good people left two years ago: hired away by other mobile startups in London like Truphone or to start their own ventures. I hope Nokia can get their shit together because I like their hardware and have some friends working for them. But they don't deserve to.

codedivine 16y ago
Did you develop your app in Symbian C++ or Qt? What are your thoughts on Qt? I have never done any Symbian C++ stuff so cannot comment on that, but I am very much liking Qt overall.
- imaginator 16y ago
  We started buddycloud development before Nokia did anything with Trolltech. Having switched to Qt earlier would have helped and mean that we could easily port to the N900 and what I hope nokia see as the future of their platform. Qt does seem nice and has helped Skype build a client that looks decent on most platforms. But for programming mobile apps, I would be more inclined to try and answer the framework question from a "What can I use on Android or iOS" POV. I see there are some java bindings for Android-land but the project is now abandoned. For iOS-land, I guess it depends on Steve's mood that month.
- defen 16y ago
  Ahh but Symbian C++ is not really C++...more like its bastard stepchild which manages to remove most of the nice stuff from C++, and is just different enough to make you rewrite your whole app </bitter>
  - noarchy 16y ago
    This is precisely the sort of thing that no doubt scared away potential developers, including me. Having owned a smartphone that ran on Symbian, it was only natural (for me) that I'd want to look at how to develop for the platform. When I did, I was not encouraged.
- daliusd 16y ago
  My impression about Qt on Symbian: it does not look native (yet) and I believe it is slightly slower than native apps. So I have not even started looking into that deeper. It is really easier to develop for Qt and I would use it for my own personal app, but for that PythonS60 is better IMHO. As for Symbian C++ API looks reasonably good. I am investigating possibility to write one commercial application and I have all required libraries/services in my phone. Documentation is good. Community support is reasonably good as well. As for language itself - it is not real C++ as mentioned in other comment. Development on Linux is possible but be ready for unpleasant surprises: no native emulator, SVG files that can't be drawn using Inkscape and etc. There is QEMU initiative but it is not ready for general usage. I have tried to build syborg but I have failed to do that.

codedivine 16y ago

Did you develop your app in Symbian C++ or Qt? What are your thoughts on Qt? I have never done any Symbian C++ stuff so cannot comment on that, but I am very much liking Qt overall.

imaginator 16y ago
We started buddycloud development before Nokia did anything with Trolltech. Having switched to Qt earlier would have helped and mean that we could easily port to the N900 and what I hope nokia see as the future of their platform. Qt does seem nice and has helped Skype build a client that looks decent on most platforms. But for programming mobile apps, I would be more inclined to try and answer the framework question from a "What can I use on Android or iOS" POV. I see there are some java bindings for Android-land but the project is now abandoned. For iOS-land, I guess it depends on Steve's mood that month.
defen 16y ago
Ahh but Symbian C++ is not really C++...more like its bastard stepchild which manages to remove most of the nice stuff from C++, and is just different enough to make you rewrite your whole app </bitter>
- noarchy 16y ago
  This is precisely the sort of thing that no doubt scared away potential developers, including me. Having owned a smartphone that ran on Symbian, it was only natural (for me) that I'd want to look at how to develop for the platform. When I did, I was not encouraged.
daliusd 16y ago
My impression about Qt on Symbian: it does not look native (yet) and I believe it is slightly slower than native apps. So I have not even started looking into that deeper. It is really easier to develop for Qt and I would use it for my own personal app, but for that PythonS60 is better IMHO. As for Symbian C++ API looks reasonably good. I am investigating possibility to write one commercial application and I have all required libraries/services in my phone. Documentation is good. Community support is reasonably good as well. As for language itself - it is not real C++ as mentioned in other comment. Development on Linux is possible but be ready for unpleasant surprises: no native emulator, SVG files that can't be drawn using Inkscape and etc. There is QEMU initiative but it is not ready for general usage. I have tried to build syborg but I have failed to do that.