3 ms·

Uno seems great. What surprised me is that it seems more successful than Codename One which has been around longer and works with Java/Kotlin. If Java is more

Uno seems great. What surprised me is that it seems more successful than Codename One which has been around longer and works with Java/Kotlin. If Java is more popular than C# (which pretty much every survey confirms), how come Codename One didn't pick up more traction. What did Codename One do wrong?

actionfromafar 4y ago
Can be any number of reasons, maybe Java shops do other things, like backend and biz logic.
tommyage 4y ago
C# can be natively compiled, doesn't it?
- invalidname 4y ago
  Codename One lets you do that with Java. Even more so since native on Android is Java...
  - michaelmior 4y ago
    I'm not sure I would say Java is native on Android. Sure, most Android apps run on the JVM, but it's not strictly necessary. Google has even released a Native Development Kit that lets you write code in C/C++. https://developer.android.com/ndk/ https://developer.android.com/ndk/
    - invalidname 4y ago
      This works through JNI. It will work fine as long as you don't use Java/Kotlin stuff. Then you will need to traverse back into the running VM. That has a serious overhead of going in/out of the VM. Since the Android UI is built in Java C code that tries to work with it is slower. Notice that this isn't true for games which interact with the hardware directly in C. Only for high level UI stuff.
      - michaelmior 4y ago
        Sure. My point is, the hardware is not directly executing Java bytecode, so I don't think I would say Java is native to Android in the traditional sense of the word. Google themselves make the distinction between Java code and native code.
StevePerkins 4y ago
Probably the #1 most popular, mature, and likely-to-actually-work-on-your-machine cross platform UI framework today is Flutter. And there are very few programmers out there who would otherwise be touching Dart (its implementation language) with a ten foot pole. I understand that Hacker News is a place where "... written in Rust!" is often a sure technique for making a post reach the front page. But the reality is that implementation language has very loose coupling with real-life success.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Dart, if I remember rightly, was originally Google's attempt at replacing JavaScript. Embedding it in Chrome didn't happen so that's where the pivot to powering Flutter happened. I think it's one of those cases where it's less that there's anything wrong with the language, so much as it doesn't really have a reason to exist yet other than the one framework it is used in. As far as these cross-platform frameworks go, being written in a popular language guarantees nothing. I've pointed out before there's a bunch of random obscure frameworks out there that use Python that have fairly low traction. Which always made me wonder why they were being created in the first place. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25490496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25490496 There even was a PHP one. https://this-is-r-gaurav.medium.com/build-mobile-apps-with-php-have-some-kik-in-life-100621c511ea https://this-is-r-gaurav.medium.com/build-mobile-apps-with-p...

actionfromafar 4y ago

Can be any number of reasons, maybe Java shops do other things, like backend and biz logic.

tommyage 4y ago

C# can be natively compiled, doesn't it?

invalidname 4y ago
Codename One lets you do that with Java. Even more so since native on Android is Java...
- michaelmior 4y ago
  I'm not sure I would say Java is native on Android. Sure, most Android apps run on the JVM, but it's not strictly necessary. Google has even released a Native Development Kit that lets you write code in C/C++. https://developer.android.com/ndk/ https://developer.android.com/ndk/
  - invalidname 4y ago
    This works through JNI. It will work fine as long as you don't use Java/Kotlin stuff. Then you will need to traverse back into the running VM. That has a serious overhead of going in/out of the VM. Since the Android UI is built in Java C code that tries to work with it is slower. Notice that this isn't true for games which interact with the hardware directly in C. Only for high level UI stuff.
    - michaelmior 4y ago
      Sure. My point is, the hardware is not directly executing Java bytecode, so I don't think I would say Java is native to Android in the traditional sense of the word. Google themselves make the distinction between Java code and native code.

StevePerkins 4y ago

Probably the #1 most popular, mature, and likely-to-actually-work-on-your-machine cross platform UI framework today is Flutter. And there are very few programmers out there who would otherwise be touching Dart (its implementation language) with a ten foot pole. I understand that Hacker News is a place where "... written in Rust!" is often a sure technique for making a post reach the front page. But the reality is that implementation language has very loose coupling with real-life success.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Dart, if I remember rightly, was originally Google's attempt at replacing JavaScript. Embedding it in Chrome didn't happen so that's where the pivot to powering Flutter happened. I think it's one of those cases where it's less that there's anything wrong with the language, so much as it doesn't really have a reason to exist yet other than the one framework it is used in. As far as these cross-platform frameworks go, being written in a popular language guarantees nothing. I've pointed out before there's a bunch of random obscure frameworks out there that use Python that have fairly low traction. Which always made me wonder why they were being created in the first place. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25490496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25490496 There even was a PHP one. https://this-is-r-gaurav.medium.com/build-mobile-apps-with-php-have-some-kik-in-life-100621c511ea https://this-is-r-gaurav.medium.com/build-mobile-apps-with-p...