Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#1

Post by ektimo » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 9:19 PM UTC

Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone
blog.edwinevans.me

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#2

Post by cschep » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:11 PM UTC

"Objective-C sucks" is just silly. If you know and like C#, of course you'll like developing for WP7 more. Weird that he talks about null references in Objective-C but you can send all kinds of messages to nil and you'll be fine. Not so in C#/Java.

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#3

Post by nestlequ1k » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:13 PM UTC

My experiences with Android and iOS dev has been pretty bad. Android has unbelievably crappy tools. Mac iOS dev tools are beautiful and extremely slick, however I couldn't figure them out. Objective-C is a huge blocking issue for me.

Recently been using Titanium Mobile which I'm starting to really like. It makes iPhone dev really nice. With Android dev though you still have to deal with the crappy tools provided by Google (compiler, emulator, packager).

I don't doubt Visual Studio has a much easier development process for apps. C# is a decent language for that kind of thing. But I don't think I could bring myself back to ever using Windows again for development (even in a VM).

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#4

Post by Tloewald » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:14 PM UTC

Complaining that Apple's docs say it's easy is unreasonable. I'm sure microsoft's docs say so too. The problem isn't that Apple says it's easy, the problem is tha it's not easy. It's not even hard. It's stupid.

I speak as an iOS developer and long time Apple devotee. The way Apple manages signing and submission is a cruel joke. It was ok as a "get it out the door NOW" beta in, what, 2008, but it's barely improved. I spend more time figuring out wh signing failed than finding actual bugs.

I don't think arguing obj-c is useless to learn is fair, but he you're a windows guy. IMHO learn new languages is seldom useless, and I'd rather learn obj-c than c# for the exact sam reasons you'd rather learn c#, and I'd argue the intellectual benefit from learning obj-c exceeds that of adding c# to java or vice versa.

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#5

Post by S_A_P » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:16 PM UTC

So my takeaway is that he prefers using Visual Studio and C# to write mobile applications, followed by java/eclipse/emacs for the android and Xcode/ObjC bringing up the rear.

I think its a fair assessment, as someone who spends his daytime hours in VS2010 writing C#, the tools are first rate. I personally like objective C as a language(I think C# and .NET is growing at a rate that will tire of keeping up with before too long where objective C is lean and easy to learn), and feel that things could be better if XCode were better. That said, the iPhone simulator is at least 100 fold better than the WP7 emulator.

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#6

Post by veemjeem » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:17 PM UTC

nestlequ1k wrote: post #3

My experiences with Android and iOS dev has been pretty bad. Android has unbelievably crappy tools. Mac iOS dev tools are beautiful and extremely slick, however I couldn't figure them out. Objective-C is a huge blocking issue for me. Recently been using Titanium Mobile which I'm starting to really like. It makes iPhone dev really nice. With Android dev though you still have to deal with the crappy tools provided by G…

What's so hard about objective-c? If you stay mostly-in-objc, it's not much different than ruby/python -- it's just method calls with named parameters. If you use any framework in ruby, you're probably already doing something similar since many method calls take in a hash where you pass in options.

Everything else after learning the syntax is just learning the api.

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#7

Post by technomancy » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:18 PM UTC

IMO the comparison between these platforms is only interesting when you take alternate languages into account. We know Java, C#, and Objective C are all way behind, so how do more advanced languages fare on these platforms?

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#8

Post by farhadabas » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:18 PM UTC

I have developed for Android, and recently started developing WP7. So far, I prefer the development environment and tools for WP7. Silverlight + Blend studio allows for quick and beautiful apps, and XNA studio does much of the work necessary to get the frame updating and rendering working. So far I am impressed with WP7.

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#9

Post by S_A_P » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:19 PM UTC

cschep wrote: post #2

"Objective-C sucks" is just silly. If you know and like C#, of course you'll like developing for WP7 more. Weird that he talks about null references in Objective-C but you can send all kinds of messages to nil and you'll be fine. Not so in C#/Java.

I actually was just wishing c# had as terse of a null check syntax as ObjC. I love the fact that I can type

if(!object)

  [[Do something]about it]

vs

if(object == null)

  DoSomething.Aboutit

I know its a small thing, but my typenames are usually lengthy so in practice C# statements can get character heavy.

Re: Developing on WP7 vs Android vs iPhone

#10

Post by ekidd » Thu, Dec 30, 2010, 10:21 PM UTC

Summary: The author is a long-time Windows developer and extremely familiar with Visual Studio. He likes the WP7 development environment best. He can deal with Eclipse for Android, but he finds iOS development with Xcode counterintuitive.

I'm not sure the author is really distinguishing between his personal tastes and the actual characteristics of each platform. But his personal tastes are shared by an enormous number of Windows developers, so based on his blog post, I imagine that WP7 will succeed with in-house corporate developers. Interesting.