

A Plea for Developer Unity - rayboyd
http://www.bigspaceship.com/blog/labs/will-all-the-flash-devs-please-stand-up/

======
Kilimanjaro
Developer here. I don't care about flash, if it dies (along with silverlight)
much better. Java should go the same way. HTML is the way to go. Everything
that can be done in flash or java should be ported to HTML so nobody can have
control over it.

So no, wrong call for unity.

~~~
lukev
I can see your point with flash, but... Java? No, unless by Java you mean
"applets" which noone uses anyway.

There is more to life than the browser, and Java (ok, the JVM: Java-the-
langauge sucks) is a pretty good tool.

------
lukev
I don't like the "technologies are just tools, sometimes you need one,
sometimes you need another, blah blah blah" line of reasoning.

Sure, it makes a certain amount of sense, and it sounds all nice and
reasonable. But that's just not the way it is. Technologies a ARE better or
worse than eachother, and the choice of which to use does have technological,
social and business ramifications.

The situation is actually more analogous to arguments of whether to use
domestic or foreign oil, or discussions about the merits of trade unions. The
options are not just handily available to pick off my workbench. They will
shape the way things are done in years to come.

------
notauser
An interesting post, but...

 _Should we always use a power drill for everything... even when a regular old
fashioned screwdriver might suffice? And what of a hammer?! A jigsaw?_

This is not like the situation with the HTML5/Silverlight/Flash/Apple battle
for developer mind share.

\- Information is more important than physical things, because information
lasts forever and is often unique.

\- Locking information up in such a way that it _permanently_ has a gate
keeper or cannot be accessed by everyone is not a good thing.

\- Through the choices developers make they directly select which technologies
succeed.

\- The technologies that succeed will change what information is available and
to who. (For example, if Silverlight wins, Linux users stop being able to
watch Internet video. If Apple wins then everyone has to fork over money for a
H.264 license. If Flash carries on winning then that's hardly perfect either.)

None of these outcomes are going to be a particular roadblock to affluent
westerners (particularly Americans and/or people who aren't rigid idealists),
but the impact on the developing world and also the startup environment will
be pretty big.

Therefore picking sides in this particular technology struggle seems totally
justified to me.

------
dasil003
The assumptions of Flash UI wouldn't work on the iPad. That is plenty of
reason not to include it, all sinister corporate motives aside.

(edit: perhaps I was too brief, no mouse pointer has severe implications for
Flash—think it through)

------
tumult
Article summary:

Bitch bitch moan whine can't use Flash on iPad bitch whine moan misunderstand
how application development works bitch whine moan I don't know that many
languages have C FFIs or even what an FFI is whine whine moan I make all of my
money working on Flash sites and am afraid of a world where Flash is
irrelevant because I have no confidence in my abilities to program outside of
this one limited environment where all of my experience is moan whine moan
Apple sucks the iPad should run OS X.

~~~
rayboyd
That pretty much the opposite of what the guy is trying to say. Did you even
bother to read and digest the article? And what the hell has foreign function
interfaces got to do with it anyway?

I despair at some of the commentary and elitist snobbery within this community
that is expressed from time to time. I stumbled across this place off the back
off a PG essay and loved it ever since because of the hacker nature and
general level of intelligence of the people. I am starting to feel like it is
a waste of my time even trying to be a part of it based on attitudes and
comments like this.

But hey you mentioned FFI and expressed a populist ill judged comment, so you
got my vote. Good-day sir.

~~~
tumult
No, it's exactly what he said. I don't get where you're coming from at all.

He started by saying that the iPad not having Flash is bad:

 _The announcement that the iPad won't support Flash kick started a lightning
storm of opinions. The alleged issue at hand is that the iPad doesn't support
Flash. This is a bad thing. [..] The iPad isn't revolutionizing netbooks, it's
devolving them back to a fully closed era._

He said the platform is locked to one language in one environment:

 _One environment, one language. A cumbersome, time consuming distribution
process.While you can certainly be expressive using Objective-C and with the
iPad, the decisions on how a user engages with something we make should be
left to the experts._

Which is not even remotely true. (Also, I'm pretty sure he just called Apple
non-experts on user interface design, addition to conflating programming
language with user interface design.) I have written iPhone applications in
Scheme, Haskell, JavaScript, C, C++, and probably some others (in addition to
Obj-C.) You can use the Objective-C layer if you want, or call the C functions
directly, use the FFI from Python or other languages, etc. He thinks
Objective-C is the only way to write iPhone applications because he's
clueless.

He makes the claim that they aren't only a Flash company. That they are open
to other technologies. And that the iPad should be an open platform for
developers to do whatever they want with. Why doesn't he take his own advice?
You can develop iPhone and iPad apps using something other than Objective-C.
Get to it. Hell, you can even write them in AS3 and compile to a native app.
Why isn't he? Why is he bitching about the closed iPad environment? Because
that's not what he actually wants. He wants Flash, in the iPhone/iPad browser,
so that Flash still seems relevant to corporate marketing departments, so that
he can keep getting paid without having to learn something new.

As for your ad hominem attacks: blow me. I don't care what you think about me
or what my comment scores are.

~~~
rayboyd
Fair enough.

This is probably what you should have expressed in the first instance, it is
what I kind of expect from this community, so don't take offense at my rant. I
pretty much agree with everything you are saying, gives me some perspective
and it adds a lot of value to the conversation (you also just gave me a heads
up on an environment I am about to learn).

~~~
tumult
Here are some things to check out if you are just getting into development for
the Cocoa Touch platform. There's probably a lot of drivel out there, now that
the platform has become hot shit for marketing and corporate dweebs, so there
are people preying on the developer rush.

<http://www.macruby.org/> MacRuby, only works on desktop OS X right now. but I
bet it will be on iPhone/iPad within a year. Runs as fast or faster than code
written with a lot of Obj-C dynamic stuff in it, much easier to write. Much
much easier.

Gambit Scheme builds for iPhone no problem. Basically all of the APIs can be
reached directly from C instead of through Objective-C.
[http://jlongster.com/blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-
schem...](http://jlongster.com/blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-scheme/) has
some info. At least a couple of commercial apps on iPhone have been written in
Scheme.

GHC on iPhone <http://www.alpheccar.org/en/posts/show/94> so you can compile
Haskell for iPhone, and then <http://github.com/nfjinjing/mps-iphone> which
will help you build stuff for writing with message passing style (Smalltalk)
with the iPhone APIs if you don't want to treat them like low-level C
functions.

JavaScript 'native' environment, bells and whistles included:
<http://www.appcelerator.com/>

~~~
rayboyd
Thanks for this information, much appreciated. My want to develop on the
device is nothing more than a hacker wanting to play with his iphone. My
business partner does love the idea of me learning it however...

Edit: typo.

