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Existing completely free cross-platform apps with free IDE support: Haxejs http://haxe.org/ http://haxe.org/ Titanium Mobile http://appcelerator.com http://ap

Existing completely free cross-platform apps with free IDE support: Haxejs http://haxe.org/ http://haxe.org/ Titanium Mobile http://appcelerator.com http://appcelerator.com Cordova/PhoneGap http://phonegap.com http://phonegap.com Wakanda http://www.wakanda.org http://www.wakanda.org These all have widget systems and GUI tools to create apps fast. Initially, making a cross-platform app seems easy and simple. It turns out debugging is really, really hard. There are many layers and a ton of version/device fragmentation. Betting my dev money on it for professional apps doesn't seem like a great idea. I think the killer feature should boil down to this: Magikai is great for kids who are just starting out in programming Right now everything seems to be business focused, i.e. these 'no need to learn code' systems: App Breeder http://www.appbreeder.com/ http://www.appbreeder.com/ AppBotic http://www.appbotic.com/ http://www.appbotic.com/ App Inventor http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu App Press http://www.app-press.com/ http://www.app-press.com/ Chatty Apps http://www.chattysolutions.com/chattyapps.html http://www.chattysolutions.com/chattyapps.html Shout 'Em http://www.shoutem.com/ http://www.shoutem.com/ Snappii https://www.snappii.com/ https://www.snappii.com/ EDIT: And more -- http://dailytekk.com/2012/04/02/100-tools-to-develop-a-killer-ios-or-android-app/ http://dailytekk.com/2012/04/02/100-tools-to-develop-a-kille... Generally a decent programmer will hit the limits of the 'easy' framework just slow enough to have wasted a ton of time. Then you have to drop into native code to fix the bugs that are not the priority of that specific framework. Appcelerator has gained so much traction because they have a ton of developers concentrated on bugfixes and full native API support. But, to get children started on programming is always a great idea, and as all of us young devs grow we will want to share the dev experience with our kids. If they can make that possible I think they'll have a home run on their hands.

scrumper 14y ago
> But, to get children started on programming is always a great idea, and as all of us young devs grow we will want to share the dev experience with our kids. If they can make that possible I think they'll have a home run on their hands. This is worth repeating. Kids are, in general, fabulously creative and completely open minded with new technology. I can see all sorts of fun, frivolous, nefarious and downright evil uses for a simple app maker that works on any kid's phone. Little Johnny makes a simple set of static pages that stores crib notes for his classes. Evil Britney, who has a few more coding chops, comes up with an app that screen-scrapes the yearbook site and lets her friends rate all the boys in her year (she got the idea from The Social Network.) If these guys can get their teeth into that market either officially (through schools) or via the terrifyingly powerful playground word-of-mouth network, this could become quite big. It's a hell of a long shot though.
- doublerebel 14y ago
  That's why even though I am skeptical, I gave them an upvote. Kids also have a ton of time and are very tolerant of things not working right on the first try. If I could amuse myself with Logo and BASIC (and later on, writing class notes and formula-solvers in graphing calculators), then I'm sure modern-day kids could take a system like Magikai to places I can't imagine. None of the other frameworks I am aware of even consider kids as a target market.
  - edfg 14y ago
    thanks for great response! I would love to talk to you further. If you like to contact me via the email in my info
    - doublerebel 14y ago
      Hi Eddie, no contact info shows for me in your HN profile. But, feel free to contact me through any channel, I am doublerebel everywhere.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- edfg 14y ago
  thanks for great response! I would love to talk to you further. If you like to contact me via the email in my info
edfg 14y ago
Hi, founder here. Thanks for a great list of competitors! We have a product we feel have both business application and education tool potential. Perhaps we could focus on teaching both kids and business people who have no knowledge of programming.

scrumper 14y ago

> But, to get children started on programming is always a great idea, and as all of us young devs grow we will want to share the dev experience with our kids. If they can make that possible I think they'll have a home run on their hands. This is worth repeating. Kids are, in general, fabulously creative and completely open minded with new technology. I can see all sorts of fun, frivolous, nefarious and downright evil uses for a simple app maker that works on any kid's phone. Little Johnny makes a simple set of static pages that stores crib notes for his classes. Evil Britney, who has a few more coding chops, comes up with an app that screen-scrapes the yearbook site and lets her friends rate all the boys in her year (she got the idea from The Social Network.) If these guys can get their teeth into that market either officially (through schools) or via the terrifyingly powerful playground word-of-mouth network, this could become quite big. It's a hell of a long shot though.

doublerebel 14y ago
That's why even though I am skeptical, I gave them an upvote. Kids also have a ton of time and are very tolerant of things not working right on the first try. If I could amuse myself with Logo and BASIC (and later on, writing class notes and formula-solvers in graphing calculators), then I'm sure modern-day kids could take a system like Magikai to places I can't imagine. None of the other frameworks I am aware of even consider kids as a target market.
- edfg 14y ago
  thanks for great response! I would love to talk to you further. If you like to contact me via the email in my info
  - doublerebel 14y ago
    Hi Eddie, no contact info shows for me in your HN profile. But, feel free to contact me through any channel, I am doublerebel everywhere.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
edfg 14y ago
thanks for great response! I would love to talk to you further. If you like to contact me via the email in my info

edfg 14y ago

Hi, founder here. Thanks for a great list of competitors! We have a product we feel have both business application and education tool potential. Perhaps we could focus on teaching both kids and business people who have no knowledge of programming.