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Native iOS development made simple [video]

45 points| jeromecollomb | 13 years ago |smore.com | reply

26 comments

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[+] adamjernst|13 years ago|reply
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).

[+] dazzla|13 years ago|reply
I've always used YES NO TRUE FALSE interchangeably without any #defines.
[+] mikeash|13 years ago|reply
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).
[+] nayefc|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] atwebb|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] dicroce|13 years ago|reply
What would be cool is if someone who was a REALLY good objective C developer made a tool... So that the generated code was of the highest quality.
[+] kcwebz|13 years ago|reply
The thing I find funny about their example is that alot of it is easily achived by storyboards anyway. I find that people choose these solutions thinking it will help them with complex requierments or ideas they have where in fact the application should or can only be used for applications for simple ideas and requierments.
[+] aarondf|13 years ago|reply
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!
[+] sdfjkl|13 years ago|reply
If you want to write iOS things, don't fool yourself into thinking there is a way around learning Objective-C and Cocoa (Touch).
[+] holgersindbaek|13 years ago|reply
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?

[+] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] gavingmiller|13 years ago|reply
Has anyone located some code generated by this system? Would love to take a look through it.
[+] argonaut|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] joezhou|13 years ago|reply
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

[+] BaconJuice|13 years ago|reply
Just curious, how did you guys derive to this number? "Reduce iOS development cost and time by 80%"
[+] pjmlp|13 years ago|reply
Marketing speech I assume.
[+] brador|13 years ago|reply
Price is $299 PER APPLICATION? or is that a typo?
[+] mikeash|13 years ago|reply
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 $299 figure isn't very important.
[+] camus|13 years ago|reply
300$ (a theme) for IOS themes ?