Monday, July 12, 2010

Openness

Google's releasing simple programming tools for the Android OS. That's a good thing. And you're not limited to some goddamned app store to distribute the results of your work.
Posted by Substance McGravitas at 5:07 PM

5 comments:

Andrew said...

You know what's funny about this is Apple programming is about the polar opposite of intuitive of you have any experience with computer programming languages at all. The vast majority of programmers know bracket-style dot-notation syntax, similar to JavaScript:

void function(arg) { set.property = value;
object.method();
}

But Apple's Objective-C throws that all out the window. That's a major, and immediate, roadblock right there for a lot of people, even if it ends up being a fairly trivial difference.

Xcode is a little tricky to learn, and again, doesn't make sense at first if you're not a total neophyte. It integrates the MVC design pattern to the point where it doesn't actually work as a general programming environment if you use a different pattern or nothing at all.

Oh, and they require you to use C, C++, or ObjC. If you don't you're violating the license agreement. And you can only access high-level iPhone features from Objective C.

Pretty much the only people who care about that crazy language are Apple and their ecosystem, the only reason to learn it is to program Apple products. The rest of the world uses C++, Java, and C#.

July 12, 2010 at 5:32 PM
Substance McGravitas said...

Apple has a couple of kiddie-coding tools that could be adaptable as iPhone coders, but once again you're not allowed to fuck with iPortables except via the Apple store.

One of the smartest moves in OSX was to go all Unixy and take advantage of tons of freebies...you get more freebies if you let people work freely.

July 12, 2010 at 5:37 PM
mikey said...

Jumping Grannies? There's an app for that!

Disturbing multi-eyed dogs? Why, there's an app for that too!

Perimeter defense scheme predicated on cheap Mongomery Ward single shot shotguns and EZ Off oven cleaner? Sorry, I'm WAY too lazy - don't hold your breath for an app for THAT...

July 12, 2010 at 5:50 PM
Andrew said...

Well, there's this.

Steve Jobs would like to take this opportunity to remind you that there are 200,000 (cr)apps in the iStore.

July 12, 2010 at 6:18 PM
NutellaonToast said...

I'd like to remind you that 80% of them are applications that mimic whoopie cushions.

July 13, 2010 at 11:13 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)