Ask YC: What Mobile programming tools do you use?

#1

Post by hafeez-bana » Mon, May 12, 2008, 11:59 AM UTC

We do a lot of mobile and web programming. There is still quite some frustration involved with getting devices supported and working correctly. Not to mention shipping updates to the application.

What tools/toolkits/platforms do you use?

I am interested in knowing how other mobile developers have handled this problem. One of the startups - Tsumobi kind off covered this problem but I have not heard anything from them.

My reasons for asking is we have this http://www.j-mango.com/ (click on the video link). We don't know if it will be useful but everyone we show it to is impressed.

What do you think?

Re: Ask YC: What Mobile programming tools do you use?

#2

Post by jamess » Mon, May 12, 2008, 12:17 PM UTC

Not exactly a secret, but Nokia's Remote Device Access (RDA) is insanely great. As far as I know, it's unique in the industry. It lets me test UIs on every single iteration of every target phone quickly and simply, and it means I can keep my own device library reasonably compact. I tend to take a week over the UI QA process, booking time on every device and going through the checklist for each. It works very, very well for me at least.

As to your own site, sorry to say this but I couldn't finish watching the video. I found it pretty tedious, and I couldn't really figure out what it is your software does and why I'd need it. As near as I can figure it's a way to bundle scripts in to SMS, and then the phone executes them. That just screams "security nightmare, don't touch with lead lined gloves" to me. Couldn't you add some text saying what it is, so I don't have to sit through an extremely amateur 15 minute video and still learn less than a paragraph of text would tell me?

Re: Ask YC: What Mobile programming tools do you use?

#3

Post by hafeez-bana » Mon, May 12, 2008, 10:04 PM UTC

jamess wrote: post #2

Not exactly a secret, but Nokia's Remote Device Access (RDA) is insanely great. As far as I know, it's unique in the industry. It lets me test UIs on every single iteration of every target phone quickly and simply, and it means I can keep my own device library reasonably compact. I tend to take a week over the UI QA process, booking time on every device and going through the checklist for each. It works very, very we…

Thanks James. We use Device Anywhere for testing (much wider range of devices in a real network environment, but not free). I'll give RDA a shot today.

The video is indeed too long. We'll make another one or even scrap it entirely.

J-Mango was built because SIM Toolkit/Java Apps were too hard for the kinds of UI's (read non-game) we wanted to build for our web sites. Doing testing for a week is not an option e.g. http://www.livebidr.com was built in about 10 hours with integration to mobile excl. the web design).

J-Mango takes care of the security aspects and device management for you without you having to to think about it (I know it's not shown in the video).

I'll post here when you I have an update. Thanks again for your feedback.

Re: Ask YC: What Mobile programming tools do you use?

#4

Post by hafeez-bana » Tue, May 13, 2008, 9:50 PM UTC

jamess wrote: post #2

Not exactly a secret, but Nokia's Remote Device Access (RDA) is insanely great. As far as I know, it's unique in the industry. It lets me test UIs on every single iteration of every target phone quickly and simply, and it means I can keep my own device library reasonably compact. I tend to take a week over the UI QA process, booking time on every device and going through the checklist for each. It works very, very we…

checked out RDA. Its only for S60 phones and not all phones are available.