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So,
If you were in a position right now to start building a team to develop applications that need to be cross-platform but, in all honestly, will mostly be running on desktop PCs and tablets, not phones (but some parts will need to be on phones and tablets)..
Would you
go the HTML5 route (Angular 2, TypeScript et al)
go the Xamarin route (but what happens when MS stuffs it up)
go Windows C# - stuff 'em, tehy can by a Windows phone.
or something else.
For the record, I hadn't considered Xamarin until MS just bought them - now I'm not so sure...
The aim is to develop micro-applications using micro-services to provide the functionality rather than traditional monolithic applications.
Generally speaking just boring business apps - although a little hardware interfacing may be required in one or two apps.
I genuinely would like to hear your thoughts - and reserve the right to entirely ignore them if they differ to my own 
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I always felt, if an app needs a bit of good user experience. I wouldnt suggest the HTML5 route. May be with exceptional skills, and updates in latest brower today one might develop a good App, dont know. But the last time I tried, I didnt like the feel of it.
Xamarin is quite expensive. I'm just hearing it's bought by MS. I think they might make it affordable. We should see how much of UI controls are covered in Xamarin. It should be an evolved platform by now.
If you are just targeting for Windows OS, then Windows Universal App platform might be better. It makes things much easier with common shared code among different Windows platforms.
On top of these , there's also an option to develop Apps with WinJS. Kinda balancing between windows Runtime and Web skills.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Vunic wrote: Xamarin is quite expensive. I'm just hearing it's bought by MS. I think they might make it affordable.
Ya know, I never saw you as a particularly "funny guy" until just now. I spit coffee all over my monitor when I read that.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
modified 21-Mar-16 8:08am.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
Ya know, I never saw you as a particularly "funny guy" until just now. I spit coffee all over my monitor when I read that.
Oh, Okay fine! Let me see if I take you out of your ignorance.
I've been into Microsoft devices development from my diaper days of my career. I remember the day they were charging big for their Embedded OS, WinCE. I remember the days where they made drastic cuts in their CE OS license costs.I remember the struggle they went through trying to establish Windows Phone OS 7.0, 7.1,7.5, 8.0,8.1 and also in the middle- things called RT, Now UWP.
Microsoft knew one of the key gold mine in future would be iOT(embedded), Smartphones & other devices.
They are desperate to get their Phone platform up and running to set up the eco system with Xbox& whole lot of things there, they are bring up. They want to take these to the masses. Marketshare of WindowsPhone in smartphoe segment is just around 0.5-1% today. Lack of Apps in Windows Phone is seen one of the key drawbacks of Windows Phone.
Now they've made Windows 10 OS free for screens under 9" to attract Hardware manufacturers.
They've invested time trying to bring Android Run time into Windows OS to let Android Apps work inside their OS.
They've fiddled with possibility of porting iOS Apps into Windows platform.
They've freely integrated Cordova into Visual Studio IDE.
They've took strain to let Unity 3D integrate with Visual Studio. This IDE feature comes FREE for community edition.
They put yet another round of effort to attract web skills to develop apps for their phone, though WinJS.
Xamarin is one of the successful platform in the corporate. Most of my friends in MNCs use this for their Apps. It's pretty successful there.
Xamarin might be a trump card for Microsoft. Companies investing 3 different teams and resources, might jump to it and this would let Apps naturally come into Windows Platform as well.
And for your info , for Cloud, They've made Azure quite affordable for entry level users. They've done so much of updates targeting JUST Smartphones & devices.
So Smartphone is very much in their Agenda. They'd throw any offers to attract people into this stream.
Did this help you come out of your ignorance , Mr outlaw programmer?
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
modified 21-Mar-16 9:35am.
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I'd probably still go the Xamarin route - it leaves you flexible for when a client comes along [whinge]"but I have a Android phone"[/whinge]
Quote: but what happens when MS stuffs it up
isnt that projecting too far down the track ? make something happen, now, with the best info you have - aint no such thing as a crystal ball
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You're probably right, but it concerns me that it may be in MS interest to stuff up Xamarin to stop people developing cross-platform?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Garth J Lancaster wrote: isnt that projecting too far down the track ?
No software product is so mature that Microsoft can't find a way to "improve" it. Look at Windows. it's been around since 1987, and they still manage to screw it up.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Xamarin is well known and cross platform with big potential. But HTML 5 has lack in the deeper power and performance.
Tip: make a complete UML diagram of the App and look what each platform can do and decide after the full UML task 
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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Xamarin - $1000 per platform per year. If you want to support "the big three", that's $3k per year, and that does NOT include fees that "the big three" charge for dev access to their app stores.
I think you should try Cordova (HTML5, javascript/typescript, css), and see how your app feels. If you're not happy, your only recourse is Xamarin (and I think writing for iOS requires that you have access to a Mac to compile it).
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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That's why I'd discounted it up until now - but with MS buying them I wonder if it will be rolled into MSDN?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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John (JSOP) makes some good points - maybe you should do a trial or mockup on Cordova and contrast that to 'native' (by which I mean SWIFT or Objective-C)(*1) (for the iPhone Im obviously talking about) and, if you have an app out there already, see how many Android vs iPhone sales/downloads you have - where I worked we only targeted iPhone because thats what the customers had
I dont discount what John's saying - but the 'lifetime' of an app is what, 3 years ? (if you're lucky) ... will MS kill Xamarin in 3 years vs when do you need to get something out there (so if you know c# and can get the app done, even at $1000 for just iOS, you have a win for the business)
(*1) if you're familiar with the Xcode environment, you can 'storyboard' basic set of app screens quite quickly to see what the look/feel & transitions might be - I found an article on this a while back, I'll try and add the link if you're interested
'g'
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On top of what you said,
If one is sure user experience matters more, I would recommend going straight to native development mode without wasting time on the same analysis cycle. We wasted a month trying to get things with Cordova only to realize the experience is not upto the mark.
The whole of Android development is coming free of cost. And only for the publisher account I guess they do a one time charge of around 25$.
Apple I think it's 99$. Both of these costs any occur no matter Native or Hybrid.
We had initial hiccups, but in couple of months, everything fell in place. And of course, contract developers are also helping out whenever needed.
If it's like a simple DB type of App, like attendance tracker. Notification viewers Or any simple data viewers, Hybrid works very good. Even a simple Responsive Web site would do the job.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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It is so easy to write an app that hosts a web page I"m not sure Cordova is worth getting tied into - although
I guess being open source one may as well not re-invent wheels.
Quote: Garth J Lancaster wrote: the 'lifetime' of an app is what, 3 years ?
3 years!??! Not in my world! We're looking at replacing applications some of which are in their 2nd decade!
I would certainly be interested in the storyboard article if you can find it - thanks!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Maxxx wrote: 3 years!??! Not in my world! We're looking at replacing applications some of which are in their 2nd decade!
ok, traditional applications ? or mobile front end vs database or REST backend ?? because the front-end stuff is changing so fast the lifetime of an iOS version is ~3 years, you may be forced to recompile/upgrade your front-end sooner than you wish - and your business will be looking for/at the next 'oooooh shiny and we want it' before 3 years 
anyway, I hope Im wrong, moving along, some links for you - btw, you probably know this, but, XCode is free & you dont need the $99 AUD Apple Developer account to test on your device (you do need a free Apple Developer account though, for the provisioning profile etc to deploy test apps to real devices, which is the ultimate 'test of what the app will look and/or feel like')
Mobile Prototyping with Xcode – MindSea Development[^]
How To Prototype In Xcode Using Storyboard | Meng To - UI/UX Designer[^]
https://designcode.io/xcode[^]
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Garth J Lancaster wrote: ok, traditional applications ? or mobile front end vs database or REST backend
The old stuff is vast monolithic applications - the new stuff will be mobile front/REST back
And updating the front end I think will be a case of UI styling rather than re-writing. I hope!
I'm a frequent XCode user - but thanks for those links, I hadn't seen them before.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I've been a strong proponent of Xamarin ever since I was a beta tester. Now that it's a mature and proven product that's free, it's a no-brainer IMHO.
/ravi
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raddevus wrote: what is the point of that?
Exactly these kind of responses
There have been extensive studies on why people are complete jerks online: internet troll - Google Scholar[^]
Also, Android sucks and so does Java 
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Sander Rossel wrote: Also, Android sucks and so does Java
Now that's much better trolling!
Now I'm ready to have the entire war over proving that Java is the best language (it's not) and why Android is far superior to all other platforms (it's an opinion which cannot be proven).
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raddevus wrote: Android is far superior to all other platforms
Because there are so many to choose from!
As I see it the only real alternative is iOS and that's Apple and as far as tech goes it doesn't get much worse than Apple. I'm tempted to write an epistle on why Apple sucks so bad, but that's really not the point.
The point is that Android is superior because there is no real alternative.
Windows Phone is much better, simpler, faster, more elegant, and better looking, but it's missing the apps and as such is pretty useless.
Java, now that's a whole different story!
Plenty of alternatives, most obvious being C#.
Now let's compare Java to C#... Wait, do I even have to? It seems to me like we have a clear winner already 
The only pro Java has is that it's multi-platform, but why would you want any other platform than Windows anyway? Hold on, I'm going to answer that myself, Windows 8 and 10.
Besides, C# is coming to other platforms as well, it's just a matter of time!
Dang Sander, you do make some very good points!
I am so brilliant sometimes
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Absolutely brilliant!
You've covered it all from all viewpoints.
I do prefer Android because it is more open to devs, but obviously it is a bit more dangerous to users also (possibly).
Also, I started with C# In The Beginning... and came to it from C++ so I'm a huge C# fan.
But that's probably also because I remember when Java was released and i built an applet and ran it in Netscape Navigator and IE (2.x maybe) at the time and it was terrible.
After that I disrespected Java until Google brought it to Android. Now I really like the Android libraries which I access via Java. Google has done a fantastic job really and not bad documentation.
It's a fun platform to develop for.
I'm a windows developer original and I have no idea what the current microsoft phone platform is even called.
Way to fail, Microsoft.
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Sander Rossel wrote: As I see it the only real alternative is iOS
Ah, so you're limiting yourself to hand-held platforms? And here I was all set to argue that OpenVMS is superior in every way too. 
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I consider Internet trolls as borderline psychopaths. They derive pleasure from hurting others. 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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And they don't come out into the open either.
Just crawling around under the bridges.
I don't know why I let it bother me this time, just annoying when you are actually trying to talk about development issues on a development site and get set as spam when others are talking about politics or whatever and i don't care. Okay, my rant is complete now. 
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And according to those academic studies you might be one 
Now stay away from me, borderline psychopath 
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