It's promising.
I wonder how different is it from Appcelerator Titanium ?
I used it 5 years ago and it converts the written JS into real native code. The downside is that if Apple releases a new set of APIs, you have to wait till the editor (Appcelerator) releases the JS bridge to those new APIs.
Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
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Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#52i'm not too familiar with react native - how much support is there for using languages other than javascript (i.e. a compiled-to-javascript language)?
One of my teammates working on Exponent was experimenting with ClojureScript and got it running, and one of our YC batchmatches wrote their app with ClojureScript and RN. It's still the very early days and I expect compiled-to-JS to get easier to use. Compiled-to-WASM might also be a good option one day.
i would be really excited about writing performant mobile apps in clojurescript! i'll see if i can find working examples on google now that i know people have done it.
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#53Does XDE run on Raspberry Pi? (Or if not, how difficult would it be to port?) It would be a nice hook to introduce people to programming if they could write mobile apps on the Pi.
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#54Does XDE run on Raspberry Pi? (Or if not, how difficult would it be to port?) It would be a nice hook to introduce people to programming if they could write mobile apps on the Pi.
I think it should? If you had Linux running on it and a monitor and keyboard hooked up, I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work.
If there are any problems, they would probably be easy to fix. The thing I'd be most worried about is just that some things might run very slow on the Pi.
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#55Does XDE run on Raspberry Pi? (Or if not, how difficult would it be to port?) It would be a nice hook to introduce people to programming if they could write mobile apps on the Pi.
We haven't tried but I think it would since XDE is made with Electron and runs on Linux. You might have to use real devices to run your app, though, since the RPi might not be powerful enough to run the Android emulator well and the iOS simulator is Mac-only. I'll have to try out XDE on my RPi sometime tonight.
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#56I've been using https://www.decosoftware.com/ and like it a lot, but I really like the documentation on the Exponent website. Part of the allure of writing React Native apps for me is that knowing React would make me a more valuable developer. I'm curious to see how comfortable I feel saying "I know React" after using these IDEs long-term.
Deco is great! We'd love to get Exponent and Deco playing well together, we've discussed it with their team but haven't had the time yet -- it'll happen one day.
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#57Without support for native modules, is it at all possible to use something like card.io with Exponent? Also, are there any plans to allow plugins that make use of native modules in the way the core SDK uses them?
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#58Does it allow recording video from the camera?
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#59It's promising. I wonder how different is it from Appcelerator Titanium ? I used it 5 years ago and it converts the written JS into real native code. The downside is that if Apple releases a new set of APIs, you have to wait till the editor (Appcelerator) releases the JS bridge to those new APIs.
Some of the biggest differences are:
(1) Exponent is a free open source project, and we don't try to charge developers to use it. (Titanium is open source now but they try to make money by charging people for premium features--which is totally fine, but just different from what we do)
(2) Exponent is based on React Native which is newer and people seem to like better (search Google for blog posts about experiences using React Native and then search Google for blog posts about using Titanium), though I can't actually compare them personally since I don't know that much about the inner workings of Titanium.
(3) You can do instant app updates with Exponent since the JS is run on the device rather than being cross compiled to native code. I don't think you can do this with Titanium (though I may be wrong -- they've added a lot of features since I last checked on it)
Re: Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android
#60Does this support iPad and Android tablets?
How about Windows tablet support?