Mobile Development Options

Kotlin has really taken over for Android dev from what I’ve seen. It is basically a simplified subset of Scala, significantly better than Java but compiles to Java.

For cross-platform I still use Haxe. ^.^

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I’m just not sure it’s mature enough and has a good ecosystem. But definitely I will try it. Later)

Kotlin is very mature, hit 1.0 years ago, used and helped developed by JetBrains themselves, being used by Google and added to the android ecosystem, and I’m not sure what you mean by ecosystem with it as it just compiled to Java, anything Java works with Kotlin and anything Kotlin works with Java, just like Scala, anything Scala works with Java and anything Java works with Scala, and consequently anything Scala works with Kotlin and anything Kotlin works with Scala. So its ‘ecosystem’ is just Java’s ecosystem, just with better and shorter and actually easy to read syntax. ^.^

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Agree. I will use kotlin on my next project.

If you think about SalfishOS see this link.
I recommend Salfish. Why? Just try it! :smile:

o.O That is one of the most confusing sites I have seen? Where is the link for Documentation? Under Developers of course! O.o Where is the link for the source repository? Uhh, I’ve still not found that of course! Also, wtf, it needs virtualbox?!? The heck?! No option to choose your install location with the forced installer. Why does it install qt creator when that is already installed and I don’t use it anyway (KDevelop is superior). It looks like just a QT library, why is it installing all this QT stuff that I already have installed… Have not yet ran across any screenshots yet either…

Immediate thoughts, seems very very fishy, it has some proprietary code (yay lock-in!), it mostly seems to be a QT library with more non-QT stuff to lock you in (yay lock-in!) even though similar things already exist in QT anyway, and I already compile QT projects cross-platform from my linux desktop to linux/windows/android, so what does it possibly gain me?

You need to test this OS to know why. It’s not an one more simple Android mod, but it’s not a topic for this.
I just put an alternative if someone is interested in other than Android/iOS devices.
SalfishOS allow to create apps in: C++ and Python with Qt library.

Of course lots of developers are looking for “cross-platform” solutions, but is there any really cross-platform solution? If so why Windows Phone have so bad support? We can write an app that works on Linux, then add support for Android etc, but create truly cross-platform app is not so easy.
In lots of programs I see they have just separated ports for specific OS (Android, iOS, Linux, Windows) instead of all-in-one program.
My favorite mobile OS was FirefoxOS. A plan for HTML5 apps was really awesome. It could be truly cross-platform, but Mozilla dropped this project.

I agree that page is not best and for example Elixir site is much more better.
I believe that we should not forgot about specific devices/OS only if they need VirtualBox. Lots of programmers had already prepared VirtualBox setup and they need just add one more machine … It’s not so easy to compare. It depends on your preferences.

I also prefer Open Source solutions, but is Android fully Open Source? Lots of pre-installed apps are not, for example: “Google Now Launcher”.

Note: SalfishOS is not so popular like Android. We can’t compare them as is by how easier is to develop simple app in each OS. Of course I agree that any thing easier to do is big plus, but it’s not why we decide to forgot about it.

I don’t tried already develop any program, but I installed some programs and they are really good integrated with OS (it’s not only OS notifications). Of course anyone had limited time for some things. It’s because I don’t tried it already, but there are people interested in mobile OS alternatives.

The only real cross-platform ‘OS’ is the Web+Javascript. :wink:

Thankfully Elixir targets hosting that. ^.^

(And Haxe also targets it if you need to do 2d/3d accelerated work. ;-))

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There is none. The OS is not open source. I’ve been following the Jolla/Sailfish OS for some time and it’s really disappointing they decided on closed-source model, because the rare users of this OS seem to like it very much.

There is new player - Kotlin Native

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may I know how you use haxe with elixir / phoenix ? do you use it with openfl / kha / NME or other haxe libs ?

I havn’t used it with elixir yet, but lately I’ve been using kha to make interfaces in it that just access html endpoints that compiles to android and linux (since those are the two systems that I use).

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I successfully connecting openFL with phoenix channel using haxe-ws lib and modified phoenix client , compiled for android ,neko and linux , thinking about making phoenix client for haxe so it can be used cross platform ( openFL and Kha) targeting html5 and native

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Java (Android SDK) is best.

By virtue of simply being a better way to write Java, Kotlin is arguably much better. It also has DSLs for Android stuff that allow you to not use XML for stuff like layouts, etc.

I think a lot of people would agree that there are far better ways to develop for native if you take dev comfortability into account, as well, outside of the JVM sphere.

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Anyone tried to build a mobile app with ocsigen? It sounds promising:

Since Eliom 6.0, the Ocsigen framework provides infrastructure for building mobile applications. This enables rapid development of Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile apps with the same APIs and programming style as for a regular client-server Web application. In fact, one single codebase can be used to produce all these applications simultaneously.

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10 posts were split to a new topic: Flutter - the new kid on the mobile development block

Just added Quasar Framework to the list.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s)

Hi all, I think we’re big enough to have a new #general-programming:mobile-development section now so have split some posts into new threads. I’m sure many many of us will look forward to seeing what kind of topics we chat about in this section :003:

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