Cross Mobile Options

Question

I created an Android app. While creating one specific app was an interesting challenge, I'm now looking into creating a group of similar apps.

I'd like to create a group of similar Android apps and then move on to creating the same on tablets and iOS... (anything mobile).

I've considered doing so with a product called PhoneGap or doing a web based mobile app. Both of these options seem less than ideal. Doing the Android app I've been frustrated by Java's lack of control and low level constructs. Moving to something like a web based app seems like the exact wrong direction.

C++ is my language of choice. It has the ability to work at a low level, is highly portable across platforms, and has significant support for generic coding which would be useful for generating a group of similar apps. However, the Android documentation suggests to not use C++ unless your goal is porting existing code or dealing with computationally heavy tasks.

I'm leaning towards using C++ anyway, but are there other options I've not considered?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could in theory write your logic in C++ and then have UI layers on top that make use of it. If you are really comfortable with C++ that might be the way to go.

Almost any other parts (networking, UI, animation, etc) are better off being done in the native language of the platform. Use of cross platform solutions always limits you in some way, and usually leads to an application that is not as good as it could be for any platform.

Answer 2

Well, Google's recommendation to not use C++ is based on the following, I believe. C++ is low level, so you can get extra performance out of it if you know what you are doing . Google makes the reasonable assumption that many programmers do not. It is easier for an inexperienced programmer to do harm in C++ then to get a performance boost.

But, if you know what you are doing, it can help you. UI elements on both iOS and Android are implemented in their main language (obj-c, and Java respectively) so there is not a great way around that, but you can write core logic and other functions in C++ and it will be portable between them (iOS can use C++ directly and Android can use it via the Native Development Kit).

There are a few other options available. The one I ended up using is Appcelerator Titanium but please stay away from it. If your project gets complicated or large at all you will hate yourself for choosing it, as I did. Another interesting one that uses C++ instead of Javascript is Marmalade . I haven't used it though, so I can't comment on it.

A non-free solution that I hear good things about is Xamarin , who have ported both environments to C# and a .NET using Mono. However, you still have to write two versions of your code for the UI as far as I can tell.