The Schizophrenic State of Software In 2014 209
jfruh writes: "The current state of the world of software is going in two radically different directions. On the one hand, server-side software is maturing, with wide consensus on tools and techniques that can be used across platforms. On the other hand, client-side programming is an increasingly fragmented mess, with the need to build apps for the Web and for multiple PC and mobile platforms, all natively. But of course, the server and client sides have to work together to deliver what people actually want."
haxe language (Score:3, Informative)
That's why we need more people using languages like this: http://haxe.org/ [haxe.org]
I discovered it a couple of months ago. It has its quirks, but not having to worry about rewriting your entire app for another platform is a blessing. And no messy VMs needed.
Re:Be Thankful (Score:4, Informative)
Deliberately missing browser features (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Schizophrenic (Score:1, Informative)
Mod parent up. This use of "schizophrenic" is both inconsiderate of the mentally ill and ineffectual for the speaker. It's based on the confusion of schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder, which is an unrelated illness. "Schizophrenia" doesn't mean "split brain", as you might naively guess. It's more like the brain bring broken. The author wasn't trying to say that software is psychotic. He should have chosen his words better.
Re:Like slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
Or refusing to let us link to a specific comment? (Pick any comment and try to come up with a link you can send to someone.)
From the classic interface, try this:
Xamarin solves some of this (Score:4, Informative)
Client side can be made a bit less painful with Xamarin. You can use one language (C#) for all platforms, and share a fair bit of code between platforms.
Of course you still need separate code to give a native UI on each platform, and different packaging to get the application out there.
Gone are the days of being able to target Windows to get over 90% of the client side market. There is real fragmentation, and innovation is happening quickly. There are many benefits to this, but stability in client side frameworks is not one of them.
Re:Adobe Air (Score:4, Informative)
SWF was amazing for its time. Streaming vector animation with synced sound over modem speeds. Even today you need a hodge-podge of technologies - SVG, Javascript and a bunch of libraries to achieve what you could do 17 years ago! And I'm not even sure you can stream a svg animation+sound.
SWF has 2 shortcomings:
- it's proprietary
- it doesn't integrate seamlessly with its environment (browser).
For standalone apps, these are not big issues.
For GUI stuff: Lazarus (Score:4, Informative)
http://lazarus.freepascal.org/... [freepascal.org]
It just compiles to Linux, MacOSX and even Windows. And for all three you get a statically linked library. And in all three you get a native GUI with the GUI elements the user expects.
I haven't tried Android or Windows CE support, but they are claimed to work.