For 5 years now I've been occasionally writing more features for Windows CE based barcode scanners. I wouldn't say that qualifies as "Windows Phone", so I didn't vote for that.
Thankfully by now we are more and more replacing these Windows CE things with iphones plus sleeves with barcode scanners which gives us a nicer API and the end user gets a much cooler device to work with.
The .NET Compact Framework is a beast: It's extremely slow and still it happens more often than not that you need something, you check the documentation, you find it, only to read that it's only supported on the desktop.
And don't get me started on the development/run/debug cycle: Both the emulator and the actual device are slow and after the 200st time that crappy assistant offered me to register my barcode scanner or even emulator(!) with Microsoft, I lost all the love that might still have been left.
Oh. And the SDKs for the scanners have this distinct feeling of being software written by hardware people when I look at how "convenient" they are to use. My personal favorite: The driver that hard-crashes the device whenever you terminate the application from the debugger. Yeah. Hit that stop-button you are used to and you'll have to wait through another 3 minute reboot cycle.
You iphone and android people have it so nice </cranky>
As part of my degree I had to work in a team developing on some ancient Dell PDA that ran a crippled version of Java 1.4 so I can feel your pain. My favourite bit was having to pull out the SD card from my machine, insert it into the device, run the code then plug it back into my machine to pull my logs so I could see what just happened!
Darn, I forgot to list it. I won't add it now though, as it would not be fair. There is an Other option for what is worth. If Other gets a huge number of votes, we'll know that options such as J2ME and others have a somewhat large market share among HNers, and it's not all about Android and iOS.
Wrote far to many games for J2ME the best of which was definitely Discworld, some really "great" memories of dealing with the fragmentation that was present. Mobile dev 7 years ago felt like a war against the brick walls that were in the way, no it feels like the handcuffs are off and the only limitation is ourselves and time
Still doing some maintenance on webOS for now (firesale TouchPads have been a nice shot in the arm...plus the fact that Palm decided to give a bunch of promo codes away for one of my apps!) but I'm working on an Android app for now and probably Windows Phone after that.
If webOS hardware comes back, I'd love to develop more apps for webOS, though.
Spending all of my programming time these days doing HTML5 Canvas stuff (work, personal projects, writing tutorials, helping people on StackOverflow, and helping those who email me for help)
Canvas is definitely on a slow-but-steady rise in popularity - there are a lot more questions each day on SO than there were a year ago. It's kind of nice to watch it grow, in a way.
I picked "Mobile-friendly Web development" though amusingly Canvas works in strangely different ways on mobile devices/different browsers, so it's more "mobile friendly" than Flash but still not quite the friendliest thing!
<3 canvas. My team and I developed an HTML5 game over the summer, and we were consistently impressed with how capable hardware-accelerated canvas was of answering our needs.
I've only just started working through the big nerd ranch iphone guide and have a few basic, simple ideas for apps that I'll be trying to get onto the app store within the next couple months. No real delusions of grandeur, I'm just curious and have gotten somewhat bored of doing web development, so something new and challenging seemed like a good idea.
I'm blown away by the number of Android developers. I wonder how many of those who voted are just hobby / tinkerers. While looking for experienced mobile devs I have found many great iPhone devs and so few great or even interested Android devs. This poll speaks otherwise.
I do professional Android development. From a Swedish point of view, my observation is that we have more iOS developers than Android developers, but Android is quickly gaining traction. More and more customers ask specifically for Android _and_ iOS versions, instead of saying "we want an app" while thinking of iPhones.
We're about 50/50 with android/iPhone... It used to be everyone wanted iPhone and then eventually some folks would want android... now it's an even break. I think it's just a sign of the times, when you ship more handsets, more folks want software for the platform.
I develop for iOS and Android using LiveCode ( http://runrev.com ), it is a modern cross-platform HyperCard descendant. It is really powerful and fun to use, not to mention that it can deploy native applications to Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux. Personally I use a MacBook as my main development machine but at home I sometimes use my Fedora 15 desktop. I have LiveCode running in both of them and I deploy to to all systems. Curious people in here might want to check it out.
Since 2003 I've written BREW, J2ME, Blackberry, a smidgen of iOS, and a metric ton of Android. I now write Android software for a living, first for doubleTwist and now for Tumblr.
Thinking about doing Android-apps. And definitely thinking about exploiting the platforms (current) lack of tablet-optimised apps to make my own stand out.
Yeah, that's exactly where I am. The current lack of Android tablet apps is actually kind of exciting - we're in the calm before the storm, and anyone who puts out a kickass Android tablet app now is in a good position.
I consider myself a mere tinkerer in mobile development (my day job does not involve such technologies directly). I like to learn new stuff, just out of curiosity. In the past I published an iOS game which netted me a whopping $55. I also have an android game in active (but very very slow) development, as well as a mobile-friendly web app. I don't expect to monetize (or even finish) the latter.
Hypothetically, if I were interested in getting in to Android development, but I didn't want to switch to using an Android phone, what would be the most cost-effective way to get my hands on an Android device that would be good for testing? Or is the emulator reliable enough to release without testing on hardware?
THe emulator is awful, even on really good hardware. I use a nexus one, which was the original developer device from Google, I think they have a new one out. Find out which phone is recommended by google.
I released a first version on Android only using the emulator but of course its never the same as testing on a device. I have a Nexus One and it's a great phone. I think Virgin Mobile would be a good source of a second/development phone as you can get an Android phone without contract for $150 and unlimited data is just $35/month http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-...
I work on Android and develop small games, I also wrote an android program for a programming contest that was an inbox for a workflow management system called Documentum..
This reflects my experience with my clients. I develop for iOS, Android, and WinPhone7. I've lately gotten quite a robust bit of WinPhone7 contract work coming through my doors. And it's not because there seems to be some huge explosion of demand for it, but rather that nobody else locally seems to be developing for it. So due to the scarcity of local developers, I'm getting a larger proportion of Phone7 work, and I'm having to raise my rates.
[+] [-] pilif|14 years ago|reply
Thankfully by now we are more and more replacing these Windows CE things with iphones plus sleeves with barcode scanners which gives us a nicer API and the end user gets a much cooler device to work with.
The .NET Compact Framework is a beast: It's extremely slow and still it happens more often than not that you need something, you check the documentation, you find it, only to read that it's only supported on the desktop.
And don't get me started on the development/run/debug cycle: Both the emulator and the actual device are slow and after the 200st time that crappy assistant offered me to register my barcode scanner or even emulator(!) with Microsoft, I lost all the love that might still have been left.
Oh. And the SDKs for the scanners have this distinct feeling of being software written by hardware people when I look at how "convenient" they are to use. My personal favorite: The driver that hard-crashes the device whenever you terminate the application from the debugger. Yeah. Hit that stop-button you are used to and you'll have to wait through another 3 minute reboot cycle.
You iphone and android people have it so nice </cranky>
[+] [-] jamesRaybould|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haseman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thechangelog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dotmanish|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acangiano|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgutteridge|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pointyhat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] veyron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregstoll|14 years ago|reply
If webOS hardware comes back, I'd love to develop more apps for webOS, though.
[+] [-] kragniz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pointyhat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonsarris|14 years ago|reply
Canvas is definitely on a slow-but-steady rise in popularity - there are a lot more questions each day on SO than there were a year ago. It's kind of nice to watch it grow, in a way.
I picked "Mobile-friendly Web development" though amusingly Canvas works in strangely different ways on mobile devices/different browsers, so it's more "mobile friendly" than Flash but still not quite the friendliest thing!
[+] [-] vital101|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noamsml|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stwerner|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheRevoltingX|14 years ago|reply
For my spare time I work on my 2d android mmorpg: http://developingthedream.blogspot.com/
[+] [-] sgarman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orjan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mainguy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soapdog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haseman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josteink|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abuzzooz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robjohnson|14 years ago|reply
1) The other OSs are fragmented. If you develop a phenomenal app on one, it may not function the same on the others.
2) Your customers are self-selected as having a higher discretionary income than the other OSs, thus resulting in you making more money.
3) iPad
[+] [-] w33ble|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dazzla|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acangiano|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mike_Nelson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lynaghk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wojtczyk|14 years ago|reply
While Android and iOS have great Tools, I still hope RIM is going to release a great Native SDK for QNX.
[+] [-] seclorum|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeKiwi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allwein|14 years ago|reply