20
A-C-E
6y

@dfox @trogus how is Appcelerator working out for you guys for cross platform development?

I’m going to be making/totally rewriting the mobile apps for an online service this summer and I’m looking into options.

Currently I’m considering Xamarin, React Native, and Flutter, but I looked at the devrant tech stack page and began looking into appcelerator. What made you guys choose that? What’s the experience like?

Also if anyone else has arguments to make for any of the other three go for it! I’m a fairly new (compared to a lot of people on here) dev but Im pretty confident without programming knowledge and I’m just curious what the industry recommendations/people’s opinions are.

Thanks devrant, you’re awesome!

Comments
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    Xamarin fucking sucks if you want anything remotely advanced, flutter is neat but lacks docs (thanks google) and community. Go for rn.
  • 2
    I'm jumping into flutter for a couple apps this summer. I like that the apps will essentially be running the same ui code so less platform specific bugs. Seems pretty performant and lots of built in widgets to give a native feel.

    @sharktits I have found the docs and tutorials for flutter to be pretty good. Lots of articles for devs coming from other areas of development. Several codelabs that build fr beginner too advanced. And then solid general docs.
  • 3
    I’m using react native. In love with it despite its quirks
  • 1
    @samiam how’s the Flutter community?

    @otavio quirks?
  • 1
    @A-C-E some annoying bugs you find from time to time.
  • 3
    @A-C-E one big advantage that Rn has is that it’s JavaScript. So many libs are already out there. And you can reuse much of the business logic you use on your web app.
  • 0
    @otavio I was thinking more in terms of specific things but it probably isn’t anything concrete
  • 0
    Like one of my dudes above pointed out, flutter does let a lot to be desired for docs in the long run. The performance of R.N is not bad at all and it lets you build for two platforms without too much fuss. I really dig it since I heavily dislike building native after 2 years of doing it for a local company. If something ain't working in R.N you can just interface with the native portion and it will work just as good. It is specially good if you are interacting with a consolidated company API, and APIS fit Javascript better than most languages(look at how to do it in Java for Android native, cry, then go back at JS, its ok, it should be easy, not simple necessarily)

    Plus R.N will give you web powers as well.
  • 2
    @AleCx04 and Xamarin sucks camel balls. Its like writing native, but in c# and you have a fuckload of bugs starting from the installation all the way to deployment.
  • 0
    @AleCx04 yeah I’ve already tried Xamarin for the project but it’s just getting anything done is so slow. So many issues
  • 0
    What’s it gotta do?
  • 0
    @jeeper basically just a mobile app that accesses the services API and allows the user to have a native app instead of a “native app” that’s just a web view rn. Might add some offline reminder scheduling features but not too much
  • 2
    I think it really depends what you’re doing. Titanium is good if you don’t need much functionality outside what the SDK provides. Many of the extensions are a bit outdated and you have to do some digging. The iOS functionality is strong that the Android portion. It would be nice if Android was up-to-par with the iOS offering.

    I’m not too familiar with Flutter, but I have played with React Native a little. It does run into the same issues Titanium does, but it’s probably getting better quickly. Also, when I had used it a while back, at least for iOS, the window animations didn’t seem native at all and were much better in Titanium.
  • 0
    @samiam tried some basic animated ui with a bit of hardware control, and had to give up because there were absolutely no guides or docs on how
  • 0
    @A-C-E the flutter community is not that big right now. RN is still the big dog in hybrid world. Hopefully it grows but it has only been approved for production apps for a few months now.

    @sharktits I haven't done a ton of animations yet just simple stuff following some docs. The tutorials out there are growing every day so hopefully it gets easier.
  • 0
    @samiam approved for production apps?

    @dfox does the SDK provide a lot of stuff?
  • 0
    Flutter is so cool
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    @A-C-E Google has been working on flutter for a few years. It came out of an experiment to build a really high performant web experience.

    Google announced at I/O in May that flutter is ready for production apps. The biggest example is the Hamilton app for the famous play. Has lots of active users and custom UI. There is a good talk from the head of the company that built the Hamilton app. They used it with firebase and built it in 3 months for both platforms.
  • 0
    @A-C-E if you do web programming and or want to use some js libraries I recommend Cordova. There’s one plugin you have to add to speed it up and I don’t know why it’s not part of the default set up. Remind me on Monday and I’ll get you the name of it. Biggest mark against Cordova for this stuff was it’s slow, but it can now be sped up.
  • 0
    @jeeper how old is Cordova?
  • 0
    @A-C-E it has history going back to like 08 but it’s still in active development. Full es6 support all that jazz. Lots of components are still coming out.
  • 0
    Go with react native.trust me i have used all of it.
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    @lastpeony yeah that’s kinda what I’m leaning towards cuz Xamarin (in my experience) is just slow to implement something and flutter seems too new and requires learning a new language.
  • 0
    @jeeper we used cordova for a small game and phaser's particle burst with 10 particles ran at 20fps on a galaxy s7. This was like 3 months ago.
  • 0
    @sharktits I would never recommend Cordova for a game
  • 0
    Devrant was built using Appcelerator Titanium. Is it me or this app is just neat and amazing. Your answer right there.
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