

Native iOS development made simple [video] - jeromecollomb
http://www.smore.com/dkr3

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adamjernst
Nice idea, but the sample code they show in the screenshot uses "FALSE"
instead of NO (the Obj-C standard boolean literal).

I'm not sure how they did that (#define?) but stay far, far away. Imagine if
you opened up a Ruby codebase and found out I had aliased NO to be the same as
the language builtin false... yeesh.

Also, setting boolean instance variables to NO in init is silly since Obj-C
objects are calloc'd, so all ivars are guaranteed to start with default values
(nil/0/NO).

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mikeash
CFBase.h defines TRUE as 1 and FALSE as 0. There's no reason to think that
they defined it themselves (and indeed, I believe this would error unless they
explicitly checked for a previous definition).

~~~
adamjernst
Correct.

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nayefc
From all the app code generators I've seen and used, the experience is
absolutely horrendous. Memory leaks, does not five you full access into the
API etc... It's a lot easier to suck it up and learn Objective-C than having
to deal with these tools.

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atwebb
Out of curiosity have you used or seen Xamarin? I've heard a lot of hype and
talked to fairly experienced people who say it doesn't add too much in size or
performance cost.

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city41
I like Xamarin's products. I am currently involved in a Xamarin.Mac project
and I definitely prefer coding with C# over Obj-C. It's a very nice combo of
having things like LINQ, nullables, properties, etc and yet you're still truly
coding against/with Cocoa. You can't use Xamarin's products without first
having at least a working knowledge of Apple's tech.

My reservation is the cost. I bought MonoTouch when it was first released and
wrote a game for the iPad with it[1]. If I wanted to release that game now
though, I'd have to re-buy MonoTouch, which doesn't sit well with me. But if
you're not a hobbyest then the cost is pretty irrelevant IMO.

[1]<https://github.com/city41/optix>

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aarondf
I think this is a cool idea, but I think it might make sense to aim it at the
Titanium platform. As a Titanium developer myself, I think this would go over
extremely well in our community. I would assume that anyone who is comfortable
enough in Obj-C wouldn't really want to use an app builder like this, but
titanium devs are already using a "builder" of sorts since they are using the
framework. Just a thought!

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sdfjkl
If you want to write iOS things, don't fool yourself into thinking there is a
way around learning Objective-C and Cocoa (Touch).

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holgersindbaek
Nice idea, but it seems like the only kind of apps you can build are apps that
takes stuff from the web and put it inside the app.

Well done that they have been able to build it though. How do you think they
are porting the html/css code to Obj-C?

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bennyg
It looks like from the video it just writes it all and you drop an info.plist
file and a build folder (probably with classes and all images) into your
project. It doesn't show it, but my guess is that you then change the initial
VC in the AppDelegate file and you're on your way.

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gavingmiller
Has anyone located some code generated by this system? Would love to take a
look through it.

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argonaut
How is this any different than building the GUI using built-in
Storyboards/Interface Builder?

If your app does anything more than just displaying content, it still seems
like you'll have to jump into the code.

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joezhou
Well, so easy a caveman can do it!

Except the product will also looks like it's designed by a caveman.. :D But
pretty cool for the everyday idea man out there

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BaconJuice
Just curious, how did you guys derive to this number? "Reduce iOS development
cost and time by 80%"

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pjmlp
Marketing speech I assume.

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brador
Price is $299 PER APPLICATION? or is that a typo?

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mikeash
If it does what it promises, then $299 per app is a trivial amount. If it
doesn't, then it's not really worth any money at all. Either way, the $299
figure isn't very important.

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jlebrech
RubyMotion?

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camus
300$ (a theme) for IOS themes ?

