29 replies to this topic

[TheNut]

Quote

I think that's really what the internet and html are. It's slow, but everyone is agreeing, and it gets more and more powerful.

My beliefs are sort of balancing on the edge of a knife. Part of me believes that html has the potential to merge everyone together, but in its current state HTML and CSS are extremely old and its lack of capabilities is showing. It's not a markup suited for application development like XAML, and so if there's going to be any future for that someone is going to have to role out a completely new markup (or support XAML) in order to eliminate the deficiencies of HTML. I personally think HTML5 should have addressed that, but such as things are...

Though I'm not sure what you mean by Microsoft alienating their userbase. The ARM tablets will be your typical locked-down useless toys, but the Intel based tablets will be a fully functional operating system like you would expect on a laptop. That's quite powerful and likely a reason many will turn heads towards Microsoft. Why sit on a train playing angry birds when you could (should?) be programming those extra lines of code And if you feel like chilling out in a park without a clunky laptop, just remove the magnetically attached keyboard and relax while you play. Its seems a logical path to me.

Stainless said:

This library got updated with a breaking change, so I have to update these six libraries.

Developers are more to blame for this problem than the OS. It's a shame distros like debian and ubuntu try to cover up the problem by providing installers to automagically deal with the problem rather than face the true problem of developers going hog-wild on dependencies and not spending the appropriate time to package their software. In some cases, GPL licensing can also be blamed for libraries not statically linking code due to license incompatibilities. This is why I personally use Slackware because its isolated design makes it easier to control the use of libraries and software. Never had much of a problem with one of the oldest and first Linux distros.

[alphadog]

Stainless, on 23 June 2012 - 10:10 AM, said:

Linux has it's place, and it is very good in those places, but not for me as a daily work environment.

Bah! BSD is just a *nix variant, like Linux. This is just splitting pinhead angel hairs... And, all your other examples are just preferences. There are legions out there who would argue otherwise (of course, since this is the internet).

But, more to the main thread:

Stainless, on 23 June 2012 - 10:10 AM, said:

A lot of developers feel the same. What is the point of an OS that you cannot get software for?

You can. This is a myth perpetuated by Apple and its crusaders. What software do most people (not hardcore gamers or devs like us) want that they cannot get on an Android tablet? EMail? There. Browser? At least four different ones. The Starbucks of apps: Angry Birds? There. Facebook? There. Netflix? There. All the major webby apps are there. What's this software I apparently cannot get. (And, disclaimer, in my house you'll find an iPhone, an iTouch and a Transformer tablet.)

I think the few developers that write articles like that are not the majority. The fragmentation in the Android world (which, BTW, owns a lot more marketshare than IOS) is dwarfed by the overall fragmentation many of us face: Android + IOS + Windows (soon to add another variant with Metro). For browser-based games, add in the various browser types. Yet, people are very succesful there. If it was so impossible, then how do you explain the successes?

Nothing is perfect. Anyone remembers how Apple almost f'ed every dev with iOS Developer Agreement, Section 3.3.1? I do.

[Stainless]

Every OS is marmite, some love it some hate it.

For me though I only really care about product out and money in.

Android is a nightmare for this. Yet again we get a solution to the issue of a huge number of hardware platforms, that ends up with a huge number of software SKU's. It's not what we as developers want. On top of that, the average spend per android device is $0.47. That is of all the millions of devices out there, the vast majority don't buy any software. None at all. (data from the network operators I work with, so not truly global, but a good indication). So market share does not map directly to the attractiveness of the platform for a developer. Hell think of Symbion!

To contrast that, the average spend on iPhone is $80.00

Windows 8 seems to me to be pushing HTML 5, (I'm not a windoze developer any more, but that seems correct to me, is it? ) but that's just a joke. http://gamasutra.com...as_a_future.php

I recently had to start using xcode, and I have to say it's the best dev environment I've used for a while. It's easy to switch targets between mac/iphone/ipad/retina. The compiler is based on a LLVM compiler as well, nice solution. Trouble is I cannot leverage it to create android/wince/windoze/linux software

[.oisyn]

Stainless, on 27 June 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

Windows 8 seems to me to be pushing HTML 5, (I'm not a windoze developer any more, but that seems correct to me, is it? )

I don't think that's correct. It'll probably support vanilla HTML5, but I think it adds a lot of features to both the markup language and the available javascript API. The idea is that you can develop your application using HTML and Javascript, not that you use the exact same paradigms and API's as you would for a regular website. A Metro app written in HTML/JS would almost surely not run in a browser.

And I think HTML5 is a bitch for UI design anyway. For example, vertical center? Oh, right, use this doubly nested <div> and some weird margin rules in CSS. Convenient.

[Reedbeta]

.oisyn, on 27 June 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

And I think HTML5 is a bitch for UI design anyway. For example, vertical center? Oh, right, use this doubly nested <div> and some weird margin rules in CSS. Convenient.

Heh, vertical centering has always been an Achilles' heel of CSS. I'm not sure why it's apparently so difficult. On the other hand, horizontal centering isn't as easy as it could be either - there are two different ways to do it. If centering text within an element you use one attribute, but if centering an element within another element, you have to use some weird margin rules.

[alphadog]

Stainless, on 27 June 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

the average spend per android device is $0.47... To contrast that, the average spend on iPhone is $80.00

I think that this statement is as likely to be true as the complete opposite. I've seen analyses (paid-for ones, not someone's guess on a blog) that go in completely opposite directions and are all over the place. The problem is the complexity in determining this. For example, one problem is that the "per Android device" can contain, depending on the source of the count, Android devices where consuming/shopping of the style the IOS world does not happen. IOW, all IOS devices are consumption-oriented, whereas not all Android devices are the same.

It's definite that Android development is a bit more difficult than IOS; a homogeneous platform (IOS) with very few hardware option is much easier to target. That didn't work for Apple in the desktop space in the long run. I suspect history will repeat itself, so it may pay for devs to not put all their eggs in one basket and learn how to straddle both world. Budget it as a "developer's insurance" line item; you pay for other insurance without immediate ROI, don't ya?

[TheNut]

And let's not forget the infamous vertical-align style. The first hit on Google is a website dedicated to explaining the property in several pages Tis why I've given up on such crud and wrote my own WPF clone using the canvas as a UI renderer. No more crying FUD.

Stainless said:

So market share does not map directly to the attractiveness of the platform for a developer.

I think it does play a role. Windows Phone is hands-down the easiest, quickest way to go from idea to market. That hasn't done jack for Microsoft though. One can complain about missing this and that, but the phone really is quite a capable device on its own. I agree that Android development is garbage, especially since Froyo devices don't fully implement the NDK and still account for 20% of the devices out there. Still, having a couple million people using your app and generating revenues through advertisements is quite attractive.

[alphadog]

I just happened to stumble on this and remebered this thread:
http://gigaom.com/mo...its-blackberry/

One more article on an analysis that adds more confusion to the mix of which platform is a good long-term bet...

[Stainless]

Interesting article, looking at that last table, there aren't going to be any developers soon

[vdf22]

RIM is starting a certification program where if a certified app makes $1,000 it is guaranteed to make $10,000 - even if part of it comes from their pockets. They're spending a lot on the BB platform to get developers for it - which is why most people are moving away, lack of apps.

Check out this link, where they compare all the platforms and their profitability: http://www.shivaengi...me-scorpion-inc