I would like to start off by saying that I am a novice programmer. I have only learned Java and Android studio, and I know very little about cmd prompts and that sort of thing. I recently found j2objc which can roughly translate my java code to objective c, and hopefully make it easier for me to transfer my app to ios. I also know there is a gradle version. For some reason, there is no "tutorial" on youtube about setting up any type of j2objc. My Android studio project is on my Windows 8 desktop and my IOS xcode app is on a VM running IOS 10.13. Can anyone help me get this working? (I may need you to explain things to me like I'm 5).
I'm sorry, but as the project lead for j2objc, I don't recommend you use it. j2objc has more benefit as the amount of shared client-side grows, so smaller apps go through a lot of pain for very little benefit. Our most successful client apps tend to be huge (think Gmail, or the Google Docs apps), written by large teams of engineers.
What I encourage is that you initially focus on sharing code on the server-side, with your apps providing the user interface but doing very little calculation on the client. If profiling your app shows it is slow due to network accesses, then you might consider caching or some other local code. If you keep all the interesting/changing features on the server-side, then small, lightweight clients require much less work even if they are rewritten for each new platform your team supports.
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What is the most current way to build a firefox extension? I realize this question as been asked many times before, but the answers I found no longer seem up to date enough, especially since the add-on builder has been ditched.
So far I have spent a bit of time learning XUL, the add-on builder, and the SDK. There are many tutorials out there for all and I have found it very frustrating to spend some time with each before realizing it is outdated. Even the SDK tutorials are often flagged "In need of technical review" or are a couple of years old.
If the SDK is the best way to get started, are the official Mozilla tutorials the most up to date? Are there other good alternatives?
Depends on the type of add-on you want to create and how much effort you're willing to put in...
Simple add-ons, like add-ons creating some toolbar button and/or interacting with web pages or doing some XHR to display some info: The SDK is likely best suited for your needs.
Everything that could be a Greasemonkey user script: SDK and page-mod.
Add-ons that are aimed at modifying/augmenting/enhancing Firefox (UI) itself are very likely better off going the XUL (overlay) road.
Very complex add-ons, that will e.g. will use some own dialogs/windows are likely better off using XUL (overlays) as well. Also it is kinda possible to use "websites" / html instead of real windows and dialogs (but usually the results suck IMHO).
If you're really into pain, bootstrapped (plain restartless add-ons without the SDK) are always another option.
You should keep in mind that the supported API of the SDK is still pretty limited and hides tons of low-level stuff by design. Therefore, right now, lots of SDK add-ons will use the chrome module anyway, and leave the safe surroundings of the SDK doing so...
I personally do not like the SDK, because I find it to be too limiting, and once you stumble upon a bug in the SDK itself (or at least think you found one), actually reading the vast abstractions that is the SDK is rather painful.
But then again the learning curve for simple stuff is rather tiny, so for beginners trying to create simple add-ons, it is a good fit.
I have been reading the abstracts on the website http://www.rikulo.org but all those cryptic vague statements do not help me. The examples are all about visuals.
I do not understand what this framework is capeable of doing. The big picture is missing.
What kind of apps can i build with rikulo?
Is there any access to the hardware?
Can is use the smartphones sensordata and send e.g. coordinates from my smartphone to a web service?
What are the limitations?
As described in this blog, Rikulo is aimed to provide a structured UI model for Web and mobile programming. We are the same team who developed ZK. With Rikulo, we'd like to take a step further since many things have been changed since we developed ZK in 2005. Also, both Dart and HTML 5 are young. It is an excellent moment to explore the best possible UI architecture for both Web and mobile programming.
For example, we use absolute positioning to give programmers 100% control the layout of UI rather than spending hours to figure out why it fails in certain combination. Another example is "recursive layered structure", such as layout manager and visual effect handling -- rather than ad hoc features targeting specific problems individually.
On the other hand, we don't have many widgets yet. It might be the reason that confused you. As a Apache licensed project, we hope we can have an active community for building widgets and addons, as long as we can really provide a solid and elegant architecture -- it is what we focus now and keep refining.
To access the hardware, you can use Rikulo Gap which is based on Cordova/PhoneGap. To communicate back the server, you can use Web socket or HttpRequest. We will have more advanced support for jsonizing, caching and communicating Dart objects between client and server, but it is not ready yet.
Technically, there is no limitation. Of course, the current number of widgets is definitely not enough, but it will get more in the near future. Furthermore, you always can create them with HTML 5 (and contribute back). However, for mobile applications, one thing you have to keep in mind: the performance won't be as good as the apps written in Objective C. The good is Rikulo is cross platform and your app can be accessed with Web browsers and as a native app.
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We want to develop an application for iOS and Android smartphones. We are mainly using Microsoft technologies for developing our applications. We thought that if we would use MonoTouch and Mono for Android we would only have to maintain one code base with only a different UI layer for each device.
Because currently nobody in our small team ever developed a smartphone application and we need it quickly we want to outsource it. We asked other companies whether they perfer MonoTouch or Objective C for iPhone development. Most of them said, that the would choose Objective C. They said that Objective C offers more functionality and possibilities, it's faster and for MonoTouch there is a chance that Apple will not support it anymore in the future. Is all of that true or are there other reasons to prefer Objective C? I know there are other threads like this around, but they did not answer my questions, especially the one regarding Apple's support for MonoTouch.
applications. We thought that if we would use MonoTouch and Mono for
Android we would only have to maintain one code base with only a
different UI layer for each device.
this is a possibility IF you structure your app right. If not: no.
If you use Java+ObjC+C# (for WP7 / Win8 metro etc) then this is not an option AT ALL
Because currently nobody in our
small team ever developed a smartphone application and we need it
quickly we want to outsource it. We asked other companies whether they
perfer MonoTouch or Objective C for iPhone development. Most of them
said, that the would choose Objective C.
If you are outsourcing it, you should dictate what you want it written in, surely? If you need to support it in-house, and you only have C# skills, then MonoTouch etc makes more sense for you, the people paying the bills!
They said that Objective C
offers more functionality and possibilities,
FUD, and also incorrect. Monotouch has the full API available. If it's not there, as Xamarin to bind it (which they have done often before)
it's faster
I'd love to see the benchmark. Yes, technically, it can be faster in some circumstances, but in general use, MonoTouch the same or quicker.
Programmer error is a more common cause of iOS app performance problems. eg not getting things off the UI thread (which is easier to do in MonoTouch than in ObjC, tho blocks have helped that a lot), or taking too long to get out of FinishedLaunching (the "main" method, if you will, tho it's not really...)
Garbage collection and things like linq, xml/json parsing, generics and collections are also hugely valuable, and very quick.
and for
MonoTouch there is a chance that Apple will not support it anymore in
the future.
yes, there is a chance. There is also a chance that Tim Cook will run off with Apple's billions and buy all of Hawaii (rather than Larry Ellison's "I'll just have this island" purchase). But the chances are now rather slim.
Is all of that true or are there other reasons to prefer
Objective C? I know there are other threads like this around, but they
did not answer my questions, especially the one regarding Apple's
support for MonoTouch.
Apple doesn't support MonoTouch. Xamarin does, and they do it exceptionally well. Apple doesn't support anything except XCode, which is their product.
Apple DOES allow MonoTouch apps (there are lots). Another way to look at it: usually, 95% of the top 100 games are written using Unity3D, which is based on the same techniques (ahead-of-time compilation of C# code and embedding a cutdown version of the Mono/.NET framework).
There ARE reasons to prefer ObjC which would be:
You already know ObjC and CocoaTouch and like it.
Your team already knows ObjC and CocoaTouch or you can easily hire people who do (note: currently, as far as I know, iOS developers are CRAZY expensive to hire, if you can get them)
You need to use the beta's the day they come out. Keep in mind that you can use the current MonoTouch and deploy to your iOS[REDACTED] device with the beta on it. You just can't use the new stuff in iOS6 YET (Xamarin said "around 2 weeks" which should be about now...). Also keep in mind that you can not deploy an app to the store which is built with the beta SDK, even if you don't use any of the stuff in it. You can't even mention iOS[REDACTED] in your product description (I've tried)
you love [squareBrackets andTheOccasional:#"strange syntax things"];
Now, will building a cross platform, shared code app be an easy undertaking? HELL NO. It's a very complex piece of development for a non-trivial application. But thats the fun part of software development: if it was easy, it'd be boring! Grab Greg Shackles book ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449320236 ) to get an idea of whats needed for iOS+WinPhone+Android style development.
My hunch is that the companies you talked to simply are used to using Objective-C. That's where their skills lie, and that's the biggest reason why they would prefer not to deviate from their path. The other reasons can be argued both ways.
It's true that no one can predict what Apple will do, but there's a very small likelihood that Apple will ban third-party toolkits & APIs like they did in the summer of 2010. That was only a short period of time, and they completely reversed that decision. Their current focus is on making app development easier, which means keeping the field open to alternative development methods. I think MonoTouch is safe.
As for speed, C# generally produces very fast executables. They may not be quite as fast as Objective-C, but I doubt you'd notice a difference. I remember seeing a website somewhere that showed C# outperforming C/C++ in some tests, but that was in the .NET environment, not Mono... and unfortunately I can't find the reference anymore. I'll keep looking. But the bottom line on speed is that C# speeds are very good. It's not like BASIC vs C. More like Java/JIT vs C.
C# gives you many, many(!) advantages over Objective-C, and they have been enumerated in other Stack Overflow answers, so I won't repeat them here. You can find them easily enough.
I'm an obvious fan of MonoTouch, but I do have to say one thing: I think it's a mistake for companies to think that because they are fluent in C#/.NET that they will easily be able to develop and/or maintain iOS apps using MonoTouch. It's just not true, because MonoTouch is basically a C# layer over the CocoaTouch API, meaning that you have to learn the Apple way of doing things. You have app delegates and view controllers and all the UIKit stuff. There's a real learning curve there. But if you're fluent in C#, MonoTouch will be a huge help.
UPDATE:
I found the article on C# speed: Head-to-head benchmark: C++ vs .NET
I have actually used MonoTouch for every app I've ever developed. Performance has never been an issue, and I can't imagine how bad for me it would have been using Objective-C. I've had 2 top 10 apps in the US app store: "Draw A Stickman" and "Draw A Stickman: Episode 2" (don't worry we are working on more).
If you know C# and .Net your gains in productivity are going to be massive compared to what would happen trying to learn Objective-C. I was a C# .Net developer (Windows only) prior to iOS development and the transition to MonoTouch is great.
If you like Linq, parsing XML in fewer than 100 lines, garbage collection, generics, simple multi-threading, and no weird square brackets, MonoTouch is for you.
I use both Objective-C and c# (MonoTouch & Droid), and I really like both. When I'm coding in c#, there are plenty of features such as Linq which I'd love in Obj-C, & when I'm coding in Obj-C there are plenty of things I'd love to have in c#, but I adapt to whatever I'm coding in quickly enough. Re performance, I've detected no difference at all, even for fairly graphic-intensive stuff, so I wouldn't use that as a reason not to use c#.
I think it's ultimately down to what you're comfortable coding in, though of course with a well designed cross-platform project, you CAN have fully cross-platform core code if you use Mono, and you'll only have to do the UI stuff in a platform-specific way - when it comes to this obviously you'll need to know the native stuff to get your UIs working in a way which is appropriate to the platform and familiar to its users.
We have a line of business app that uses MS SQL as a data store, and has WinForms and web UI's. It integrates with our windows mobile 6.5 and tablet apps with web services. All c#.
We've fully committed to MonoTouch after some experiments in Objective-C and HTML-5 (we had working prototypes): we get to re-use our business logic, and we're comfortable developing new code in c#.
Our business logic is constantly being enhanced, and these enhancements are immediately visible to the mobile app - without having to replicate the logic in Objective-C or C++.
Our main issue is finding a c# programmer who's comfortable with the iPhone and iPad UI's.
MonoTouch is stable and we've encountered no limitations (we're binding to the same iOS API that Objective-C binds to). During our learning curve, we've had question, bumped into bugs and have had some misunderstandings - but the support from Xamarin is superb.
Performance has been a non-issue - our app is snappy even though it's doing a lot behind the scenes.
No body can tell you for sure what will apple support and what it will not support in the future, however apple had some issues with mono in the past, and since history tends to repeat itself, then it may be a possibility of that to happen again
Having said that, always go with the native application development SDKS and environments, it will be more flexible, and it will be updated real time, and performance will always be better in the native
I understand that iOS 5 is the latest (and the greatest) version of the Apple Mobile OS. I also know that it contains ARC, OpenGL ES Debugger yada yada yada...
I have already developed some in-house apps at my company and they all work perfectly fine. But as a developer, should I really bother upgrading all my apps to be iOS-5 compatible? If so, why?
"Upgrading" doesn't really apply to apps, only the OS. If your app already runs fine on iOS 5 (ie is "compatible"), which it might well be, there's no reason to change it.
If it's not currently "compatible", implying that you've tested it and something in the app is broken when run on iOS 5, then you would consider fixing or working around those issues so that your users on iOS 5 can use your app.
If these apps are ones that you're continuing to develop, you'd consider whether using the new technologies (ARC, new frameworks, etc) is worth the trouble of doing so and/or dropping support for older devices. That's a tradeoff only you can make relative to your apps and your business needs.
Considering that majority of crash related problems are due to memory allocation/deallocation/reference errors, it might be helpful to port the code over to use ARC. Of course the time/cost will need to be determined to see if it's worth it.
Do a cost benefit analysis.
Would an update building with the iOS 5 SDK benefit your customers by fixing existing or probable bugs, adding iOS 5 features, or providing other opportunities to just make a better product? Would an update provide you or your company with an additional marketing opportunity? At what cost in development, test and QA time?
Perhaps it would be a long term advantage in helping keep your development skills more up to date on the new APIs and tools (such as ARC).
But there's also an adage: If it ain't broken, don't "fix" it.
I need to deploy a Delphi app in an environment that needs centralized data and file storage system (for document imaging) but has multiple branch offices with relatively poor inter connectivity. I believe a 3 tier database application is the best way to go so I can provide a rich desktop experience with relatively light-weight data transfer needs. So far I have looked briefly at Delphi Datasnap, kbmMW and Remobjects SDK. It seems that kbmMW and Remobjects SDK use the least bandwidth. Does anyone have any experience in deploying any of these technologies in a challenging environments with a significant number of users (I need to support 700+)? Thanks!
Depends if you are tied to remote datasets. If you aren't dataset bound then SOAP would likely be a good choice. Or, what I've done is write my own protocol that is similar to SOAP in nature. This was done before SOAP was standard and I'm glad I did - this gives you the ability to control more of the flow of data. It's given that if you have poor connectivity then you will be spending time supporting it. It's very nice if it's your own code you are supporting versus having to wait on a vendor. (Although KBM and REM are known to be pretty good vendors.)
Personal note: 700 users in a document imaging application over poor connectivity sounds like a mess. Spend the money on upgrading connectivity as it'll be cheaper in the long run.
Both kbmMW and RO SDK offer binary format, which is more compact than SOAP format,specially you are working with documents.
RO sdk seems to offer more GUI tools to help you doing your services.
Also give a RealThinClient SDK a look, it's a lightweight remoting framework.
But what ever framework you go with, your design of work will make it fast or slow, I have some applications working on slow 128kb lines, and it's working perfect without any user complain, but I don't do a large transfer for files.
One thing to remember...its not the number of users, but the number of them using the resources at the same time that will be the issue. Attempt to develop your application "server stateless" if at all possible, this will allow greater flexibility in the long term if you find you have to add more servers to the pool to support your customer base. The hardest thing about n-tier is scaling beyond the first server...plan on that from the start. Each request should not know anything about a prior request...or at the very least the request should have a way of passing the context so the server can look it up in a session table or something.
Personally, I would recommend RemObjects. I have used it with good results.
I don't know if it's the very best / most efficient (glad you asked this question!), but I've had good results w/RemObjects SDK + DataAbstract. The latter made much of the plumbing details less involved, which was helpful. Still implementing, but so far so good.
If you really wanna go "low-bandwidth" use BSD Sockets API - that'll give you full control over what's being sent and there you can send as little information as you want. Of course then you'll have to implement all the tiers yourself, but hey - that's still an option :D