JavaScript becoming the lingua franca for mobile development

http://www.sdtimes.com/JAVASCRIPT_BECOMING_THE_LINGUA_FRANCA_FOR_MOBILE_DEVELOPMENT/By_Christina_Mulligan/About_JAVASCRIPT_and_APPCELERATOR_and_IDC_and_MOBILEDEVELOPMENT_and_LINGUAFRANCA/67508

by cmulligan • 13 years ago

42 52 13 years ago

sdtimes.com

fidotron2• 13 years ago

Not just being a contrarian, but really?

I could swear it's C++, and I hate C++. One major factor is it runs on all environments, including via asm.js if you are inclined that way.

It might be true that most apps end up written in other things, but the most money will be made from C++, C# (via Unity) and ObjC. If your app is too easy to write it will be cloned and you won't make money from it anyway.

nawitus3• 13 years ago

If your app is too easy to write it will be cloned and you won't make money from it anyway.

That's a bit oversimplification. First of all, writing in JavaScript doesn't make the app easier to clone, the programming language has very little effect on the easiness of cloning. Secondly, even if an application can be re-implemented quickly, doesn't mean one cannot make money from it. Twitter can be implemented in a single weekend, but that doesn't mean the Twitter-clone will be profitable.

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

"...but that doesn't mean the Twitter-clone will be profitable."

Especially considering that Twitter isn't either :-).

al2o3cr2• 13 years ago

"First of all, writing in JavaScript doesn't make the app easier to clone"

Yep, shipping the source code for your entire application IN the application doesn't make it any easier to clone. Somebody better tell that to the Phonegap users who are dealing with knockoffs:

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/02/17/ripoff-apps-plague-some-ios-d...

CodeWithCoffee• 13 years ago

I have to agree - if anything there is a greater move away from JavaScript towards native platforms, although I think that C# via Unity and Xamarin.iOS/Xamarin.Android is gaining significant popularity. C++ does technically work on both iOS and Android, but I think its use outside of games is fairly small - Google has bold text on the NDK download page saying it won't be useful for many applications and Xcode's support isn't anywhere near as good as its support for Objective-C.

fidotron2• 13 years ago

Very true about Xamarin - that has exploded in the last six months or so.

ulisesrmzroche2• 13 years ago

I think how easy your app is to clone depends more on your feature set and business model, than any choice in language. It's actually an advantage to use languages that make it easy to write your applications, since really, speed-to-market is the most important factor in selling software.

sjtgraham• 13 years ago

"JavaScript becoming the lingua franca for mobile development" says a report commissioned by a company hawking a mobile framework where the API is… JavaScript.

jmspring• 13 years ago

When you have a hammer...

coldcode• 13 years ago

JS is a terrible language that nonetheless has wound up being everywhere. But despite its shortcomings as a language it is extremely flexible in what you can do (abuse) it with and that is probably its biggest advantage.

nawitus3• 13 years ago

Most critics of JavaScript don't know the good parts[1]. Sure, JavaScript has problems, but convention and static analysis fixes a lot of it. In addition, you can use something like TypeScript if you don't prefer dynamic typing. And it must be said that JavaScript does some things better than C++/C#/Java, e.g. functions. These languages are only now starting to catch up.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook

reirob• 13 years ago

Thanks for posting the link to the video. Just watched it, total of 1 hour - was really worth it for me. Increased a bit my love for JavaScript.

daliusd7• 13 years ago

I have really started considering JavaScript with KitKat as WebView uses Chromium engine in KitKat.

It is even better that Moto G (200$ device without contract) has KitKat already.

charlesdm3• 13 years ago

For apps that just display content, sure. Those are essentially nothing more than glorified web apps.

For apps with specific functionalities, no way. A combination of Java (for Android) and Objective-C (for iOS) with potentially some C++ under the hood to easily share logic code between platforms. C and C++ are pretty much the only languages that run on all those platforms (out of the box). Obviously you can get any language running on any platform, given enough time.

daliusd7• 13 years ago

What about writing cross-platform UIs using HTML/JS for those parts that must display content (not necessary from web)?

charlesdm3• 13 years ago

While I think as a concept it's absolutely great, I'm still not that happy with their actual results and performance. Things have certainly improved over the last years, with iOS moving closer towards Android by using flat design.

If you're targeting high end devices (which is easier when targeting iOS than Android) it's probably pretty good for UI stuff. The problem usually lies with the lower end Android handsets. That said, most of these pure HTML/JS apps are pure junk when comparing them to a well developed native app. Depends what the business objectives of the app are, I guess.

dschiptsov3• 13 years ago

Nonsense. For Android it is NDK (which is why it is possible to build nice apps, like FB client) which is C[++], for iOS it is ObjC. Other platforms cannot be considered seriously in 2014.

drdaeman• 13 years ago

Android NDK is primarily about native code, not language (except, possibly, for somehow language-related ABI like "C" calling convention or x86).

As for languages - it's whatever you can compile.

Skinney3• 13 years ago

The Android NDK is usually used for applications that don't use the Android API's (which are all Java). Most applications on Android is written in a JVM-based language. The sort of applications that would typically use the NDK are games, emulators, VMs (like Xamarin.Android) and the like.

ObjC is also slow. Anytime you write something performance sensitive in ObjC, you usually drop down to pure C or pure C++. Luckily, since valid C is valid ObjC, this is rather easy.

Javascript and HTML is actually a great fit for mobile, but there are two complications. 1) You will have to mimick the UI of the native platform. 2) Mobile platforms have sub-par JS engines. iOS don't allow JITs outside Safari (even when you use a webview in your ObjC app) which in turn makes JS-based apps in iOS slow. Android has in general had a pretty sucky webview, but that is getting fixed in 4.4 with chromium being the default engine.

JS is getting better everyday on the mobile though, I would be surprised if not alot of people were using JS for apps in the coming years.

dschiptsov3• 13 years ago

This is exactly what those marketing guys have said. In so-called objective reality 99% of apps people are using, such as FB, Adobe reader, Skype, WhatsApp, you name it, are NDK apps.

99% of TOP20 apps in each category are NDK apps, you like or not.

bengotow• 13 years ago

Hah - what a joke. Stopped reading when I got to the second line: “[Javascript's] ability to render rich results from lightweight, simple-to-learn languages has made it a natural fit for mobile’s speed of development,” according to Appcelerator." I take it the developers polled for this article are the ones on Appcelerator's mailing list...

jeswin• 13 years ago

SD Times submissions are becoming a little spammy. To maintain HN's discussion quality, please submit original articles and try to link directly to the original. While it is totally fine to submit your own (or your company's) articles, the point of HN is to have great discussions.

Tloewald3• 13 years ago

Bear in mind that Appcelerator is really targeting the Enterprise market, and Enterprise folk are used to sluggish, ugly, non-native applications (and cough sluggish, buggy development tools).

ulisesrmzroche2• 13 years ago

Javascript will be the only language we talk about in this board in less than 2 years. Mark my words HN.

I love it!

tcgv2• 13 years ago

I really enjoy programming in javascript too. I use it mostly for user interface development in web applications. However, I try to avoid using it in large projects because I personally believe strongly typed languages are better suited for handling large code bases.

michaelwww• 13 years ago

I'm wrapping my JavaScript in a TypeScript "facade" to get some of the benefits of type checking and advanced IDE support in a large project. Works for me

fauigerzigerk• 13 years ago

HN without language wars? That would be extremely uncharacteristic.

mooreds• 13 years ago

Oh boy, another language war.

Snooze.

Tloewald3• 13 years ago

Somewhat off-topic, this is really a misuse of the term "lingua franca". If anything, the lingua franca of development is currently JSON/XML.

puppetmaster3• 13 years ago

From engineering POV JavaScript is more effective, for example w/ cross platform PhoneGap.

Say you have a $2M eng budget for start up round A for 2 years, so $1M per year. 1/2 goes to services/back end dev and ops. So $500K for front end. 3 platfroms, Web/mobile web, Android, IOS, so 3 developers ~ 150k. I recommend you get 3 HTML/js devs.

If you get 1 per platform: vacation/sick time, turn over, management difficulty, lack of oversight, pain. Just let the compilers do the work.

ouggnay• 13 years ago

In what world is Javascript "lightweight"?

tcgv2• 13 years ago

Probably in Bizarro World [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World

laichzeit0• 13 years ago

Why do people even care about languages? I've written code in dozens of imperative, object oriented and functional languages and really can't see what the fuss is about. It takes a few days to get comfortable with a new syntax and then you're back to looking up library documentation and gluing pieces together. Learning a new syntax is a fraction of the time spent writing an application. Are people just lazy, complacent or stupid?

melling• 13 years ago

Well, it would be nice to get more reuse out of mobile code. Having to write a mobile app twice is a bit of a hassle.

daliusd7• 13 years ago

People want to write the same app once: not one version for iOS, another for Android and third for something else. JavaScript seems moving towards that. Qt/QML is another choice that is available now but Qt has its own problems.

You should choose the right tool for the job - that's it. That's neither stupid, lazy or complacent.

reddit_clone• 13 years ago

Qt has its own problems

Could you elaborate on that?

I was excited a few days back that iOS/Android is now supported by Qt/C++. I found that it still doesn't support the QtQuick Controls on mobiles. That dampened my enthusiasm a bit.

KrisAndrew• 13 years ago

Managers and executives often care about languages. It actually is pretty difficult to find developers who can easily pick up new languages. Most of the places I've worked at, the average number of languages known by individual developers was about 3. By the time I was 20 I had learned 13 (and 3 human languages). That's an exception.

If your programming stack consists of 3-4 different languages, the mental maintenance required by the developers can become considerable. That number of languages is an inflection point. After that point is reached, you'll see resources directed to rewriting things in order to reduce the overhead, or the executives will end up creating new departments with different language requirements and roles.

It's not that people are lazy, complacent or stupid, it's that on average they can't retain multiple representations of the same thing in their head. If you search around, I think you'll find the average number of human languages known by any given person is between 2.5 and 2.8. Programming languages are no different than human languages.

academicish• 13 years ago

actually javascript kind of sucks for mobile dev - unless of course you are a company pushing javascript for mobile dev.

jbeja• 13 years ago

Had anyone used Duetto to make mobile apps?

volaski• 13 years ago

I actually gave up on jS + html5 to build apps. Do you know why? The main selling point was "It's cross platform!", but with iOS7 and Android UI diverging away from each other, this "cross platform" thing is not really true anymore. sure you could make an app with shitty UI that's cross platform, but you really want to do that? Maybe for games, but for rest of the apps, this "HTML5 is the future" is over in my opinion

al2o3cr2• 13 years ago

One wonders if describing JS as a pidgin for mobile dev would be more accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

"A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language."

m1117• 13 years ago

Are there any good examples of mobile apps made with JS?

JavaScript becoming the lingua franca for mobile development

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