Mobile App Development
-Native (java,swift)
-Xamarin
-React Native
-ionic
-what else?
...Which should I choose to use in the future and why?
I'm Thai ,Sorry for my language ...Thank U
From my experience (So i might be wrong on some stuff):
-Native (java,swift):
native languages are cool is you have ressources(as employer), like time and money. Because you need 2 programmers to do 1 app on both systems. As programmer, these skills are valuable for your future employer but you (most of the time) can't do both (java and swift)
-Xamarin:
In my opinion, xamarin used to be cool when there was no "hybrid" solutions, it was really better than cordova in terms of performance
-ionic:
I spent a lot of time on ionic and the actual framework is pretty cool, big community etc. But actually, the performances arn't really good. I used Ionic for my prototypes where I didn't need to have a perfect native feel. Plus, Ionic is great if you already know a bit of HTML / CSS / JS. You can do a good app in no time.
-React Native
I switched to react 6 months ago and it's way better than Ionic. At first, the architecture is kinda hard to get but once you to everything is faster. The community grows really fast so does the plugins. The framwork is growing fast and the updates are frequent (about 1 by month) There's also the Expo tool who help's you to build on android and ios painless. The only problem with expo is, you can't use plugins who needs a reack-native link yet. Some of them are implemented over time but there's still some work for that. The Expo team is doing a really good job at giving us a tool that makes our deployements and framwork upgrades painless.
Hope it helps :)
Related
I'm on the cusp of beginning a Xamarin project. I have been doing loads of research on what the best starting point would be and i have come to the conclusion that i need to learn the Android framework and begin by building a native Android app in Xamarin instead of Xamarin.Forms.
However, looking to the future i would want to be cross platform for this app. I have searched high and low on any information about what it would take to take a Xamarin.Android app and migrate it into a Xamarin.Forms app so that i can then build out the iOS app for my project.
Does anyone have any information on if this process is easy or hard to do? Can you take a Xamarin.Android app and someone migrate it to a Xamarin.Forms project? And if not would the approach be to rebuild the apps under a Xamarin.Forms project? Is there a easy approach to this?
Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.
With more than two years of experience with Xamarin (Native and Forms), I have never seen a tool or anything of any sort that will help you with migration but I can give you my personal opinion on this and maybe help you a little. Let's begin.
I have been doing loads of research on what the best starting point would be and I have come to the conclusion that I need to learn the Android framework and begin by building a native Android app in Xamarin instead of Xamarin.Forms
I would say this was a good decision Since my personal experience tells me that it is crucial for you to know either Android or iOS before you start working with Xamarin Forms otherwise there will be points in time where you will be lost af seeing the code, thinking how did you get yourself into this mess ;)
I have searched high and low on any information about what it would take to take a Xamarin.Android app and migrate it into a Xamarin.Forms app so that I can then build out the iOS app for my project.
There is no direct way of doing this you will have to do it the old fashioned way...
Converting(Manually) Android XML to XAML is quite easy so the design won't be an issue.
The C# part might be a problem as a native Android code is quite different to forms, But you can do it with ease with time.
Note: That there will be a lot of stuff that you would want to keep in mind for eg how Xamarin.Forms works. Because when you start doing the changes you will face a lot of issues finding equivalents and stuff but it will get easier
Does anyone have any information on if this process is easy or hard to do?
It's not about hard or easy it's about time taking or not and trust me it takes time.
Can you take a Xamarin.Android app and someone migrates it to a Xamarin.Forms project?
I am a little bit confused by this part of the question but if you mean is it possible yes it is.
My comments:
You will need good knowledge of how Xamarin.Forms work and by that I mean you should at least go through all the Xamarin.Forms guides in Xamarin University which can be completed in a week or so with proper understanding.
Going forward I would say use an MVVM framework for your Forms app, it will help you have a well-structured code and will keep you up to date with the industry standard.
Also, note that MVVMCross for a beginner in MVVM is too complex, so avoid it if you have no idea what MVVM is, going with Prism or FreshMVVM would be comparatively easier.
Don't depend too much on Xamarin.Forms NuGet's for doing certain functionalities.
Rather write your own code using Plugins for everything is too much dependency and becomes a problem at crucial times.
The readme.md at https://github.com/NativeScript/windows-runtime says that the Windows runtime for Nativescript is in proof of concept stage, and then lists what I understand to be very deep language features that are not implemented yet.
The tone on the https://www.nativescript.org/blog/nativescript-runtime-preview-for-windows-10 announcement seems a bit more enthusiastic about the current feature set.
Being able to use Nativescript on Windows Phone (and any other platform) is incredibly appealing.
TJ, a core team member, recently posted on the forums about this:
Hey #NezzaGrey,
Thanks for reaching out, and awesome that you’re liking NativeScript :smile:. >Straight to the point though—we’re not actively working on UWP support because >1) it’s a ton of work to add a new platform and commit to supporting that >platform indefinitely, and 2) we’re not seeing nearly enough demand from our >community to justify taking on that work.
That doesn’t mean that UWP support in NativeScript will never happen, but it’s >not coming in the short term because we’re just not seeing the demand. That can >always change though. I’d encourage you to add your use case to the GitHub >issue open for adding UWP support in NativeScript: >https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript/issues/254. Yes, the issue is >somewhat ancient, but we really do pay attention to well-thought-out comments >during roadmap discussions.
I’ll note two other things. First, our initial work on making a Windows runtime >is completely open source and available on GitHub: >https://github.com/NativeScript/windows-runtime. We’d love to have community >?>help to make the new runtime a reality.
Second, one option you have is to build your iOS and Android apps with >NativeScript and Angular, and to use our code sharing approaches (see ?>https://www.nativescript.org/blog/code-sharing-between-web-and-mobile-with->angular-and-nativescript1) to share your Angular code with other apps. You >could take that approach to share Angular code between your NativeScript apps >and your UWP apps if you use something like Electron. This approach isn’t >ideal, as you’d probably prefer to build a completely native UWP app, but it’s >something to consider if you’re open to using Electron.
Anyways, hopefully you found some of this helpful. If you have any other >questions feel free to follow up.
Source: https://discourse.nativescript.org/t/windows-uwp-support/2659/3
I have found a lot of articles (and forms) about Ionic vs Xamarin but they always talk about Ionic 1 or Xamarin when it was still paid for (so before march 2016 when it was acquired by Microsoft).
I have to research Ionic 2 vs (current) Xamarin and I know that both technologies have made huge advancements. Can anyone help me on my way with some sources or is it still too early to ask this question?
Xamarin: With one year of experience, I have realise it is really flexible IDE to use. The amazing part about Xamarin is you have 2 option, i) go native ii) go cross platform, this make it open on what kind usage you prefer and how you want to go about.
OS Support/Deployment to: Windows, iOS, Android, Mac
Languages Used: XML, C#
Ionic: especially Ionic-2, It amazing for all HTML, CSS, and JS users to build application for web, mobile applications. I haven't seen its deployment for windows phone(if it is, then i am not sure) With Ionic, forget all your MVVM structured coding. But the new implementation of version-2 parallel with angular-2(typescript) it might make it possible to implement.
OS Support/Deployment to: iOS, Android, Web(HTML/CSS)
languages Used: HTML, CSS, Angular-2
Star Rating
Xamarin - Mobile and PC Dev - 4/5 stars on usage of IDE and deployment. There are immediate help available upon stuck through Xamarin Forums. Documentation is little vague.
Ionic-2 - Mobile and Web Dev - 3/5 stars on usable and compatibility. Its hard to find some answers to specific question, rest ionic docs are great at documentation and implementation.
Hope this helps. PS: This is completely my own view as i have used both of this tools personally. Comments are welcomed.
I am trying to evaluate whether Xamarin would be a good option for my project. The project is a large, complex app for Android and iOS with a lot of client-server communication. The user interface is a major focus and has to be really fast and smooth. Also, we plan to make large use of UX graphic effects (comparable to the Spotify app).
For now we are planning to go for two separate native apps using Java/Objective-C. However, the possibility of cross-platform code sharing would be very convenient for us of course.
Most opinions I've heard so far say that Xamarin - although far better than HTML5 apps - cannot match the UX of a native app. Also, I tested the following applications made with Xamarin (on Android):
Rdio
MarketWatch
Busch Gardens Discovery Guide
Sqor
Storyo
From my impression, none of them could quite match the speed and smoothness of a good native app.
If our focus is on a top notch user experience, would Xamarin really be a viable option? Can it really match a native UX? I am particularly looking for opinions from developers who have experience with large and complex cross-platform Xamarin applications. A few critical voices would be very helpful.
Thank you a lot!
I'm on the Rdio mobile development team, so I can make some personal reflections from that standpoint.
Xamarin allows you to write native applications in C#. Any slowness, jankiness, ugliness or bad-appiness usually has nothing to do with the Xamarin layer itself.
You save some time being able to share core business logic between your different clients, but you're still writing the UI from scratch, specific to the platform. You're just writing it in C#.
But while you save that time, you're spending it in other ways. All of those SDKs you want to use probably aren't compatible with Xamarin out of the box. You won't be pod install'ing that iOS framework, and you might be reinventing the wheel for handfuls of things. Xamarin takes advantage of the NuGet repo so you have a library of components that handle many of the things most people need (Analytics, Testing, Facebook SDK, JSON parsing, Database, etc etc) but it doesn't cover everything. And it certainly doesn't cover stuff that's out the day of an Apple or Google product announcement.
Any 3rd party code that you do want to import into your project will be done through writing custom bindings. While not usually difficult, it is time consuming. Xamarin has a team of people that specialize in assisting you in this. This fact speaks to the process being messy at times.
So while the slowness, jankiness, ugliness or bad-appiness probably isn't the fault of Xamarin, it might be the fault of you spending time in places you normally wouldn't, or not being able to take advantage of features you normally would. If that 3rd party partner SDK is giving you problems, your troubleshooting may take twice as long because there's a layer that you don't control.
UI is a wash. You're writing it from scratch anyway.
Business logic is shared. Depending on the app that might be a win if you architect your application to take advantage of it.
Compatibility / bleeding edge ability will be lacking. That might not matter to you at all, or you might be the person wanting to take advantage of that hot new API in the next OS release the day it's announced.
My personal thought, without knowing specifics, is if you want to build an application that you plan on being around years from now, and that will take advantage of the latest and greatest, I'd tell you to write natively for each platform. Unless you can really see huge gains in sharing that business logic the upfront gains are minimal. Or if you really like C#.
Xamarin uses native controls. So you design a fully native UI per platform. The users can't see that your App is made with Xamarin or Java/Objective-C.
There are sometimes performance issues in conjunction with the platform independent UI wrapper Xamarin.Forms. But you're not forced to use it. When you have still performance issues in your Xamarin.Android or Xamarin.iOS app then you produce them in your code.
There are benchmark results for Android apps comparing Xamarin.Android and Java apps: Does anyone have benchmarks (code & results) comparing performance of Android apps written in Xamarin C# and Java?
As you can see Xamarin's internal performance became better and better over the time.
Conclusion: Yes, you can write smooth native Apps using Xamarin.
I'm a developer most comfortable with web languages (PHP, Javascript etc.). Now, My company wants to start making iPad apps for pharma sales reps that basically gives a nice introduction to drugs.
We used to subcontract it but we want to bring it in house. It's a very big plus for me financially if I can take on the jobs and do them right. Now doing my research, these apps aren't crazy; they just kinda need to act like a powerpoint slideshow with a little animation and interaction.
I don't know Cocoa. I know there will also be a learning curve with it as well. I do know Sencha slightly. Does anyone here have any experience with either of these platforms and do you think it's a "might as well learn cocoa" type of thing? The only reason I like Sencha is becuase you program in Web languages and can port it to app stores. Any ideas? Suggestions?
My answer is always just to learn Cocoa in situations like this, but Sencha is actually surprising not-bullshit. I'm really impressed with it.
However, I wanted to note a few things: I don't know exactly what you mean by "port it to app stores", but I want to be sure you don't delude yourself into thinking than an app written with Sencha would be usable on any platform other than iPad. Of course you could load a page written in Sencha on non-iPad device, but the entire point of Sencha is tailoring your web application to work surprisingly well on an iPad. So, it will be out of place anywhere else, and given the quality of current iPad competitors, it'd be unlikely to perform adequately off of the iPad at this time.
So, if you want to use Sencha, it has to be for the right reasons (of which there are two):
You want more flexibility in deployment: you don't want to have to deal with Apple's Enterprise deployment system. Apple's not interested in apps that only pertain to one company (internal software) on the App Store, so if you want to go the Cocoa route, you'll have to use their Enterprise Ad-Hoc deployment.
You don't want to / can't afford to take the time and learn Cocoa (really, to make an app that doesn't sucks will probably take at least a year of experience, trial and error, etc.; at least, that's how it was for me).
If either one of these things is true, I'd go the Sencha route. But as an advocate of iOS, I really hope you take the time and learn Cocoa! I believe I speak for all the Cocoa developers on Stack Overflow when I say that we'd be happy to help you with any questions you may have as you go. Good luck, whatever you decide!