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Could we start to come to an agreement that maybe "Native" might be a bit of a marketing term? For example a browser rendering HTML and CSS is probably native u

Could we start to come to an agreement that maybe "Native" might be a bit of a marketing term? For example a browser rendering HTML and CSS is probably native under the current term. It is not until you get to JavaScript that things need the JIT VM.

wtallis 12y ago
There's still objective meaning to the term, even if opinions may differ on what threshold to use for "native". HTML and CSS aren't used to do computation, bytecode and machine code are. So it doesn't make sense to talk about whether HTML and CSS are native or not, only whether the rendering engine is. JITs produce native code, but a lower quality in almost all cases when compared with ahead-of-time optimization, so there's still good reason to make a distinction.
Pacabel 12y ago
"Native" is not a marketing term, and we shouldn't pretend that it is. It has a very specific definition in this context, and this definition requires that the application be represented in a form that's directly executable on whatever CPU is being used by the computer executing the application. Anything that doesn't match that very simple criteria is obviously not a "native" app. Maybe a new term is needed for describing this type of situation involving Firefox OS. I don't know what that would be, but I do know that we shouldn't go ruining an existing technical term.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  Would that make Android development that uses XML layouts and the Dalvik JIT VM "obviously not a native app"?
  - Pacabel 12y ago
    Right. If there's bytecode of any sort that needs to be converted to machine code on the fly, then we aren't dealing with a native app. We wouldn't consider a Java app running on HotSpot on a desktop or server Linux system to be considered a "native app". Thus we shouldn't consider a Java app running on Dalvik on a mobile Linux system to be considered a "native app" either. Maybe that will change in the Android case if ART and its AOT compilation approach is more widely adopted. But that'll still be some time in the future, if ever at all.

wtallis 12y ago

There's still objective meaning to the term, even if opinions may differ on what threshold to use for "native". HTML and CSS aren't used to do computation, bytecode and machine code are. So it doesn't make sense to talk about whether HTML and CSS are native or not, only whether the rendering engine is. JITs produce native code, but a lower quality in almost all cases when compared with ahead-of-time optimization, so there's still good reason to make a distinction.

Pacabel 12y ago

"Native" is not a marketing term, and we shouldn't pretend that it is. It has a very specific definition in this context, and this definition requires that the application be represented in a form that's directly executable on whatever CPU is being used by the computer executing the application. Anything that doesn't match that very simple criteria is obviously not a "native" app. Maybe a new term is needed for describing this type of situation involving Firefox OS. I don't know what that would be, but I do know that we shouldn't go ruining an existing technical term.

fred_durst 12y ago
Would that make Android development that uses XML layouts and the Dalvik JIT VM "obviously not a native app"?
- Pacabel 12y ago
  Right. If there's bytecode of any sort that needs to be converted to machine code on the fly, then we aren't dealing with a native app. We wouldn't consider a Java app running on HotSpot on a desktop or server Linux system to be considered a "native app". Thus we shouldn't consider a Java app running on Dalvik on a mobile Linux system to be considered a "native app" either. Maybe that will change in the Android case if ART and its AOT compilation approach is more widely adopted. But that'll still be some time in the future, if ever at all.