Anyone had experience with time-saving toolkits for Mobile Development?

I've done both iOS programming for iPad/iPhone and Android programming. All in the native platforms - Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android.  Conversion between the two is much easier than porting to basic or an other non-C-derived language, but still takes no small amount of effort.

There are toolkits that claim to make the development and porting much easier.  Specifically, MonoTouch by Novel and a tool called Sencha-touch.

Does anyone have an experience with these?

My past experience with toolkits that claim to save time has been much to the opposite.  Generally there is less initial development time, but maintainence becomes clumsy and cumbersome.

Any thoughts?

Views: 166

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dan Woods on May 27, 2012 at 8:41pm

But why not use phonegap?

Permalink Reply by Nemanja Nesic - NEM- on May 27, 2012 at 8:41pm

Take a look at PhoneGap http://phonegap.com/

Permalink Reply by Kevin Neelands on May 28, 2012 at 8:28am

Have you used phonegap?  And if you did. did it save man-hours in the long run?

Permalink Reply by Richard Dean on May 28, 2012 at 11:17am

Yes, I would also like to hear about other's experience with PhoneGap.

Kevin Neelands said:

Have you used phonegap?  And if you did. did it save man-hours in the long run?

Permalink Reply by Jackie Gleason on May 28, 2012 at 2:10pm
Phone gap and titanium are good although you would have to follow their convention. I would say givin you are used to working in a c-based language you just use c then just implement the UI in objective-c or java. Or even better use a open gl es based UI library then it will run on both (basically what some frameworks do). I have been toying lately with the idea of using node native modules compiled for arm but I am still working on that.


P.S. you can compile objective c natively on android but not all the cocoa libraries (uikit) are open sourced yet.
Permalink Reply by Vlad Sanchez on May 28, 2012 at 2:21pm

Check out Corona. Although it is mostly used for game development, I've known many people using it for database applications lately. I've attended their last Meetup and it was an inspiring experience.

I personally was looking to overcome the fragmentation issues. After the meetup I realized there are no silver bullets. It's even a topic many people avoid talking about.

I hope this helps. Try Corona, it's free to try and very cheap to use commercially.

Permalink Reply by Jackie Gleason on May 28, 2012 at 6:36pm
Corona looks interesting but -1 for needing to buy and -1 for not having a responsive website

RSS

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Podcast: Taming Flaky Tests: Trisha Gee on Developer Productivity and Testing Best Practices

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Trisha Gee about the challenges and importance of addressing flaky tests, their impact on developer productivity and morale, best practices for testing, and broader concepts of measuring and improving developer productivity.

By Trisha Gee

Presentation: LLM and Generative AI for Sensitive Data - Navigating Security, Responsibility, and Pitfalls in Highly Regulated Industries

Stefania Chaplin and Azhir Mahmood explain how to navigate the complexities of AI in highly regulated industries. They discuss MLOps pipelines, data security, evolving legislation (GDPR, EU AI Act), and the critical frameworks for responsible, secure, and explainable AI. Learn practical prevention techniques, XAI methods, and future trends in AI for cybersecurity and beyond.

By Stefania Chaplin, Azhir Mahmood

Learning from Embedded Software Development for the Space Shuttle and the Orion MPCV

Software development is much different today than it was at the beginning of the Space Shuttle era because of the tools that we have. But the art and practice of software engineering has not progressed that much since the early days of software development. Compilers are much better and faster, and debuggers are now integrated into development tools, making the task of error detection easier.

By Ben Linders

QCon London 2025: Hybrid Cloud-Native Networking in Enterprise - Some Assembly Required

In an engaging talk at QCon London 2025, Louis Ryan, CTO of Solo.io and co-creator of Istio, addressed the complexities of hybrid cloud-native networking. He emphasized intentional assembly of network components, critical evaluation of tools, and treating networking as a primary focus to ensure reliability, observability, and security in today's intricate enterprise environments.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

.NET 10 Preview 3: C# 14 Extension Members, ASP.NET Core State Persistence and Other Improvements

Last week, the .NET Team announced the third preview release of .NET 10, introducing several enhancements across various components, including .NET Runtime, SDK, libraries, C#, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, .NET MAUI, and more.

By Almir Vuk

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service