Developing for the iPhone

Man, Android is a lot easier to develop for than the iPhone. Admittedly, part of this is my detestation for Objective C, but part of it is that the Android framework is very simple.

I’m having a really hard time forcing myself to even look at Objective C, let alone write it.

7 Comments

  1. Stan Switzer says:

    Not feelin’ the “magic?” The iPad is powered by unicorn tears.

  2. I’ve got this flexagon flexer applet that flexes a virtual hexaflexagon. See http://www.kathrynhuxtable.org/blog/Flexagons for more info. See the “Interactive flexer” for the applet.

    I converted it into an Android app with no trouble, of course, because Android has Java and it was a matter of converting the libraries from AWT to Android. Not a lot of work.

    It’ll be more work for the iPhone and iPad, because I’ll be converting the language, but it’ll be doable. I just don’t want to do it.

    You know, and I know, because we discussed it last week in Sunnyvale, that there’s nothing magical about the iPad.

  3. Stan Switzer says:

    I was killing time in an Apple store last night (I commented to my daughter: these iPads are like the massage chairs at the Sharper Image–where my kids were banned for life!). A customer was incredulous about no Flash or Java and the sales guy was repeating the company line… rather unconvincingly I might add. It was pretty clear he didn’t believe it either.

    Anyway, FWIW, my feeling is that a language is just a language but in the 21st century you’d better have a really good reason for writing unmanaged code. I dunno, maybe process sandboxing will save yer bacon, but it still seems nutty to me. The only problem with Java for GUIs is that the portable toolkits are not very good and the non-portable ones don’t speak to people all hung up on “write once.” But I’m old enough to remember when Java was supposed to be a first-class Cocoa language and that might have worked out pretty well if Apple were really serious about it.

    Anyway, Java’s a great choice as a mobile programming language, provided there’s a decent programming model. Sounds like you’re diggin’ it.

    As for the “magic,” I have that all figured out:
    iPad = iPhone – phone – camera + Miracle Grow.

    But seriously, it’s a great product that moves the game forward. A “good first-generation device” as they say. :) In next-gen devices you won’t have to choose between two primitive, error-prone languages.

  4. Banned for life! Wow!

    What do you mean by “unmanaged”?

    Yes, a language is a language, but some are uglier than others.

  5. Ah. I see. “Managed code” is some kind of Microsoft freeze-dried bullshit.

    It looks okay, but Java *is* managed code of a sort. Just not Microsoft managed code.

  6. Stan Switzer says:

    Oh, no, I just mean generically languages like Java where you can’t scribble all over memory.

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