Opinions - Developers clash on iOS vs Windows 8

[HEXUS]

An article positioning Windows as the superior platform for developers has divided opinion.

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[Spud1]

Nice article. I've got to disagree with the anti iOS developer mentioned there - objective-c is really simple to pick up if you know *any* c syntax based programming language - so thats Java, C#, C, C++ and so on..so it covers the vast majority of developers these days.

The good nad bad thing about it though is that it's fairly low level - so it does help to have some idea about concepts like memory management, which you can pretty much ignore if you want to when writing Windows phone 7 or windows 8 applications.

So it is definitely simpler to write something for WP7 (or indeed windows 8), which will be an advantage to Microsoft in the future.

I see the killer feature in Windows 8 being the cross platoform availability of /new/ applications over all 3 platforms - phone, tablet and desktop. Take the new office for example - you could (in theory) buy it once and then use it on all 3 devices, taking your work with you whever you go. The same applies to games, IM clients..pretty much anything.

You can get such convergence now but it's very disjointed - if Microsoft get the syncing/cloud service that will undoubtedly go along with this correct, it will make it all so easy..

Actually a better example is the firefox (or was it opera) feature that lets you transfer your open windows and bookmarks to a mobile device, and back again - seemlessly moving between them. It sounds like this kind of thing will be really simple to do in Windows 8 - and that is a huge benefit compared to the competition. Apple have this between the iPhone and iPad (write once, deploy to both by changing the UI..MVP style) - Microsoft will have it for the desktop too.

[TheAnimus]

I thought the article by Baxter-Reynolds was very good, and I agree with much of it. What I do find funny thou is the reply from iOS people, normally ripping on eclipse. I will say I've found the tooling simply awful. However you can get it done, obviously there are apps been made, but someone who as their day job writes java, or writes .Net seemingly gets paid more (inqjobs ads in london) they will probably know that technology very well.

Objective-C is disgusting. The ideas in it are not nicely convayed by the syntax, by apple limiting the choice so tightly they are only hurting themselves, plus there is a total lack of 'nice' features which a .Net dev would expect, everything is slow, and primitive.

As such I think he is completely on the money that the 90% of devs who work on boring code (like me!) will never really want to learn it, out of 4 dev friends who all went off and bought macs (hey their devs, we're over paid!) just to write an iPhone app, only 1 saw it through to the end. However two of them have released andriod ones. I think its just objective-C isn't pleasant, its old, and in much the same way whenever I have to 'drop down' to C++ I feel like I'm driving a 1970s made british car, its britle and not a relaxing experiance.

I will say I don't know how anyone takes Grubers stuff seriously, he doesn't really understand anything about software development, or the fact microsoft isn't a hardware firm, or that its a 'good' thing developers don't get their hands on something at an early stage. The Win8 thing is branded as a dev preview......

I think thats also a big difference here, windows 8 will have lots of software out at the start which is of a professional nature, by that I mean took more than 6 months to make.

He also ignores the fact MS have ported and demo'd Office on the ARM platform.....

[Scott B]

Those are both really interesting perspectives, thanks. Opinion is clearly divided on the matter.

[TheAnimus]

Those are both really interesting perspectives, thanks. Opinion is clearly divided on the matter.

Yes, but I'd be tempted to say that the title gets the set wrong.

Developers on large don't like Objective-C. Despite how fashionable mobile app development is, people don't really seem to enjoy doing it on mass....

As such I think the debate is amoungst the existing mobile app developers on iOS. The Baxter-Reynolds article did mention that by talking about the 90% who do boring software by day.

If its about tooling along there is no argument the microsoft eco system is much better.

The issue is, that Apple already has a massive market share of the mobile development platform, the professional software house that are moderately large. WP7 has plenty of games by the Microsoft funded studios, but its lacking the middle sized, the person who is doing it on their own during the day, or the firm of 3 devs and a dog. It is only those people who will be in doubt. Everyone else will have a better 'offering' of ecosystem from MS. But do they matter?

Are the code at night people, and the few giants going to make it a success? Will people buy in to the concept before the market user base exists?