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I used to work in Nokia's developer relations group. For a lot of developers, the following requirements are all hurdles that make WP more trouble than its wort

I used to work in Nokia's developer relations group. For a lot of developers, the following requirements are all hurdles that make WP more trouble than its worth: - Learn a new language (C# is awesome but odds are the dev you are talking to already knows Java or ObjC. Telling an Android dev to learn C# is more work than telling him/her to tweak his/her Android app) - Get Windows (a huge number of mobile devs are on MacBooks. Getting Windows costs some combination of time, money, and precious SSD space) - Get Windows 8 (a lot people who are on Windows are on Windows 7 and have no desire to go to Windows 8) bottom line: telling devs to tweak their Android apps for some kind of "MSMS" over GMS would represent a whole lot of lower barriers to entry.

tmzt 13y ago
Possibly, but just saying learn C# so you can program for Windows Phone is the wrong selling point. It should be learn C# so you can develop native-quality apps for all mobile platforms. Microsoft should completely embrace Xamarin. That would solve the OSX problem as well, as developers could use whatever OS and IDE they prefer.
contextfree 13y ago
Removing these barriers doesn't actually require forking Android, though. For example they could create a Java language projection for WinRT alongside the C++, .net and JavaScript ones. Actually just making the existing JavaScript stuff from Windows 8 available on WP might help a lot.
scholia 13y ago
Windows is on more than 90% of PCs (including a lot of Macs), Visual Studio is one of the most popular development environments, and C# is one of the most sought-after skills in the job market. And as others have noted, Xamarin for Visual Studio lets you develop for iOS and Android as well. https://xamarin.com/visual-studio https://xamarin.com/visual-studio Also, C# isn't compulsory because you can develop in HTML5 instead. So, it might be impossible to get people who specialize in iOS apps to develop for WP8, but it should be possible to grow a comparable ecosystem. And making apps run on both W8 and WP8 would be a good move in that direction. The short term view may be bleak but the future is uncertain, and the long term _could_ look different.

tmzt 13y ago

Possibly, but just saying learn C# so you can program for Windows Phone is the wrong selling point. It should be learn C# so you can develop native-quality apps for all mobile platforms. Microsoft should completely embrace Xamarin. That would solve the OSX problem as well, as developers could use whatever OS and IDE they prefer.

contextfree 13y ago

Removing these barriers doesn't actually require forking Android, though. For example they could create a Java language projection for WinRT alongside the C++, .net and JavaScript ones. Actually just making the existing JavaScript stuff from Windows 8 available on WP might help a lot.

scholia 13y ago

Windows is on more than 90% of PCs (including a lot of Macs), Visual Studio is one of the most popular development environments, and C# is one of the most sought-after skills in the job market. And as others have noted, Xamarin for Visual Studio lets you develop for iOS and Android as well. https://xamarin.com/visual-studio https://xamarin.com/visual-studio Also, C# isn't compulsory because you can develop in HTML5 instead. So, it might be impossible to get people who specialize in iOS apps to develop for WP8, but it should be possible to grow a comparable ecosystem. And making apps run on both W8 and WP8 would be a good move in that direction. The short term view may be bleak but the future is uncertain, and the long term _could_ look different.