4 ms·

And yet it doesn't support native code. What a big fail!

by chj 15y ago

replax 15y ago
It's been announced (was some days ago on engadget), that native C++ support will come with the next update. Not sure when that will be as I did not dig deeper into it, but I assume it's rather soon.
potatolicious 15y ago
There's a big fail here, but I don't think it's the lack of native support. What percentage of highly successful, heavily used Android apps rely on native code? It seems that 99% of the dev community is fine writing Java. Hell, why are WP7 devs clamoring for native code anyways? It's because the .NET performance is terrible. The failure IMO is in .NET, not the lack of C++. The capitulation and addition of C++ support isn't a strict win either - devs now have access to performance, at a substantial engineering effort cost. Doing things that would have been simple on other platforms now requires C++ hackery.
- molmalo 15y ago
  why are WP7 devs clamoring for native code anyways? It's because the .NET performance is terrible. Wrong. It's not because of .Net performance. They're asking for native support, mainly to make much easier to port games and other apps from Android and iOS to WP, being able to actually reuse code, instead of a complete rewrite. Nobody wants to write the entire app several times, when targeting to multiple platforms.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    My personal experience with C++ on Windows (CE in 2002) was not very encouraging WRT portability. You may get more commonality between destop Windows and WP7 than between WP7 and Android but the code may end up with a lot of ifdefs and windows-isms in it. It's been a while, so YMMV. It could, in fact, be easier to mechanically translate between Java and C# than going C++.
- chj 15y ago
  Android doesn't have a good native toolchain but somehow they still provide native support, no matter how inconvenient it is. In contrary, Microsoft have a great native toolchain (years of work in IDE, debugger, compiler) there but decided developers should not use it. And this is why it is so stupid.

And yet it doesn't support native code. What a big fail!

by chj 15y ago

And yet it doesn't support native code. What a big fail!

It's been announced (was some days ago on engadget), that native C++ support will come with the next update. Not sure when that will be as I did not dig deeper into it, but I assume it's rather soon.

potatolicious 15y ago

There's a big fail here, but I don't think it's the lack of native support. What percentage of highly successful, heavily used Android apps rely on native code? It seems that 99% of the dev community is fine writing Java. Hell, why are WP7 devs clamoring for native code anyways? It's because the .NET performance is terrible. The failure IMO is in .NET, not the lack of C++. The capitulation and addition of C++ support isn't a strict win either - devs now have access to performance, at a substantial engineering effort cost. Doing things that would have been simple on other platforms now requires C++ hackery.

molmalo 15y ago
why are WP7 devs clamoring for native code anyways? It's because the .NET performance is terrible. Wrong. It's not because of .Net performance. They're asking for native support, mainly to make much easier to port games and other apps from Android and iOS to WP, being able to actually reuse code, instead of a complete rewrite. Nobody wants to write the entire app several times, when targeting to multiple platforms.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  My personal experience with C++ on Windows (CE in 2002) was not very encouraging WRT portability. You may get more commonality between destop Windows and WP7 than between WP7 and Android but the code may end up with a lot of ifdefs and windows-isms in it. It's been a while, so YMMV. It could, in fact, be easier to mechanically translate between Java and C# than going C++.
chj 15y ago
Android doesn't have a good native toolchain but somehow they still provide native support, no matter how inconvenient it is. In contrary, Microsoft have a great native toolchain (years of work in IDE, debugger, compiler) there but decided developers should not use it. And this is why it is so stupid.