My twopence worth... as a hobby app developer, my main concern is a platform that puts up as few obstacles as possible.
I loathe "version hell": the code works under this version, but breaks under that version ; the display is fine on most screens but breaks on particular sizes ; yada yada. Any cross-platform SDK has to sit on top of all these versions, from each of Apple, Android, Microsoft, perhaps all the browser APIs if you're doing web-enabled stuff, and any other random companies (Ubuntu, Samsung?) that bring out a mobile platform. Somewhere, you are going to have to make a trade-off. On some aspect, you're going to be way behind the single platform SDKs. It might be performance, complexity, features, robustness, whatever, but it's going to be something. Who do you expect to use your platform? For example, governments would want to develop cross-platform apps as cheaply as possible and don't care about performance or robustness, game developers probably care about performance, retailers probably care about look&feel and robustness. On Saturday, March 21, 2015 at 11:39:26 AM UTC+10, Mario Zechner wrote: > > Hi, > > i'm the guy behind libGDX (http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com) and am > currently also working on RoboVM (http://www.robovm.com) which allows you > to run Java/Scala/Kotlin/... on iOS. Just like with libGDX, my main concern > with RoboVM is to make cross-platform app development easier for people > coming from a Java/JVM/Android background. We want to get input from the > broader Android developer community to help us shape the future of RoboVM. > It would mean a lot to us, a team of 4 devs, if you find the time to > comment on the below blurb. > > A lot of people here are working in app shops that probably create apps > for customers or themselves that need to work on both iOS and Android. Some > may only focus on Android but may wish to expand to iOS. > > There are a few frameworks/platforms out there that can help with sharing > code between both Android and iOS (C#, Java, JS, Ruby, pick your poison). > > Some of these frameworks/platforms allow you to share business logic and > use the native UI APIs on each platform. This means you'll have to write > the UI for each platform separately. The UX will most likely be better, but > at the expense of more development time. Let's call this the "native UI" > solution. > > Some frameworks allow you to share both the business logic and the UI > code. A cross-platform UI API either wraps the native UI API (lowest common > denominator between the two platforms), or it uses something like a > webview, emulating the native UI. The UX will most likely be worse, but > development time can be reduced. Let's call this the "cross-platform UI" > solution. > > I'd be super happy if you have any input on the following questions > 1. Do you think cross-platform development is viable at all? Why/Why not? > 2. Would you rather use the "native UI" solution or the "cross-platform > UI" solution? Why? > > Our focus with RoboVM at the moment is on the "native UI" solution and > making the code-sharing of the business logic as easy as possible. Once > this is complete, we also want to offer a "crossplatform UI" solution. We > are currently evaluating different approaches: > > 1. JavaFX. That's already alpha quality, there's a whole community around > it and we enable them to work on iOS. But it isn't the most natively > looking & feeling option. It also carries the Swing heritage with it. > 2. Webview. Quite flexible but shares all the same problems that Phonegap > et. al. have (performance, look & feel). > 3. Custom cross-platform UI. Gives us the most freedom. Maps a common API > on top of native UI APIs, so the look & feel is native. Might be a leaky > abstraction though. > > I do have my preferences regarding the above 3 options, but i'd really > love to get input from you folks on that. > Thanks for your time, really appreciate it. > > Ciao, > Mario -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
