Mobile development is a debacle
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great
Sorry to hear that. I've had nothing but success with Xamarin. Admittedly, I currently build native Android apps only. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
In my limited mobile development I used Basic4Android (B4A). It is very simple, similar to VB6. They also have versions for iOS, Linux, and several others. b4x.com is the website.
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Once I get this working
:-D
It's much easier to enjoy the favor of both friend and foe, and not give a damn who's who. -- Lon Milo DuQuette
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Genuinely curious as I don't do that kind of stuff... Is the problem ios development tools ? or cross-platform development ?
I'd rather be phishing!
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
I've dealt with a few android apps using Android Studio, and each was a mess. Emulators either didn't function, or were pathetically slow/limited. Countless re-installations later, I opted to do live debugging on my phone and ditch emulation. The one experience with Android apps that went smoothly involved a game I made in Unity3D. Got to keep the C# love, and it compiled for Android and ran without hassle.
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
B4X seems to be the bees-knees at the moment, haven't tried it myself though ... https://www.slant.co/topics/5817/~ways-to-make-a-cross-platform-application[^] But all those upvotes on Slant look a bit fishy though, the upvoters do not show any other activity than their upvote for B4X. :confused:
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Have you given WebAssembly/ASP.NET Core Blazor[^] any thoughts?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Start simple. "Hello World" ;)
Latest Articles:
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
With one UWP project, I'm available on "PC, Xbox, Mobile, HoloLens, and Surface Hub" (X86, x64, ARM). My "mobile" is a Surface GO (though technically a PC). The ARM "mobiles" are (apparently) starting to come into their own.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
What's a mobile app? :-)
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Yeah, mobile can be a pain. [NativeScript](https://www.nativescript.org) looks interesting. I think there are other Frameworks / Tools like this as well. E.g. PhoneGap, Cordova, React Native. Almost too many to choose from. [Flutter](https://flutter.dev) also looks cool, although you'll need to learn Dart.
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
I'm surprised because you can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development, because after many more years cross platform desktop development is still very complicated. And after many, many more years, cross platform host development is still very complicated despite the fact that their most widespread language, COBOL, was born with an environment section to solve cross platform problems. So I'd like to know what platforms you're comparing mobiles to: Abacuses? Sorry, it is just a joke. What I mean is that we have to be aware that cross platform development is a very ambitious challenge. But it is also true that we are now much more concerned about cross platform development: We put more effort into it than in the past and have the experience of trying it for so many years. Going into the subject, there are two main ways to achieve multi-platform applications: 1) Develop a single application that looks and works exactly the same on all platforms. The question is why there are different platforms if we end up building a dull identical application on all of them. 2) Develop an application that shares almost all the code but allows adapted code to take advantage of the special features of each platform. For me this is the right way to cross platform development and it's the one that Xamarin took. Of course, Xamarin is not perfect and it has a tough learning curve if we want to succeed, but it is worth the effort as long as there is nothing better. I'm starting to test the UNO platform and so far it's doing very, very well in the trials, but I cannot recommend it until I develop and test something real (UNO platform uses inside Xamarin infrastructure and ideas to some extent). It should be added that both Xamarin and UNO platform allow cross platform development not only for mobiles, but also for desktops (UNO platform also includes WebAssembly browsers). NOTE. There may be better environments for cross platform development, but C# coding is essential for me.
Sorry for my bad English
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
I've been very happy with Xamarin.Forms, coming into it with an existing C# WebForms and MVC experience. Even though Microsoft is embracing React Native, I don't see them pushing anyone away from Xamarin. Xamarin seems to have a strong community within Microsoft, and it gets better and more user-friendly with every release of Xamarin.Forms and Visual Studio for Mac.
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
From my perspective the answer to cross platform mobile applications are Progressive Web Apps (PWA) CSS, JS, and HTML paired with C# backend allows me, with the help of a service worker and manifest, to create a PWA. Once a site is PWA-ified, the site triggers Add-to-Home-Screen functionality on iOS and Android browsers. Once on the home screen the site behaves like an app, with the browser elements stripped away. The beauty is now that any updates to my site (still one code base) are available to anyone who clicks on the app icon. To take it one step further PWAbuilder.com then creates three app packages (Play Store, App Store, Windows Store) which I then use to have a copy of my site (oops app) live on the three stores. In the very near future you can get rid of most of the JS in your client code using Blazor.
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
Simple solution. Quit going to the gym. Sheesh.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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I've been working on and off for the past year in trying to write a small mobile app to help my training at the gym. It's stupid simple what I'm after, but I've been trying to avoid going the easy (aka hard) route of separate iOS and Android apps. Because I like to complicate things and yet I'm lazy and super short on time. I have a Windows Form version, which I ported to a Vue/Typescript web app. I'd like to stick to either .NET or TypeScript as my language of choice. It seemed Xamarin would be sensible given that it allows me to stay in C#. Except my experience with Xamarin hasn't been great and it seems Microsoft is pushing React Native for UWP apps. So why not Reach Native? Porting Vue to React/RN is simple enough and I'll simply stick with TypeScript as my core language and I'm done. Except that I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to work. I've forked GitHub repos that have "complete apps". I've walked through, line by line, the official docs on Facebook. I've spent the hour installing the Android SDKs, node, gradle, chocolatey, yarn, react native, etc etc etc. GB worth of installs. Endless command lines. Opening a powershell window in Admin mode to run the ps1 scripts. Manually adding the environment variables. Insane. I can't believe that 13 years after the iPhone was released we're still in the string and ducttape era of cross platform mobile development. Once I get this working and boiled down to something sensible I'll write an article.
cheers Chris Maunder
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B4X seems to be the bees-knees at the moment, haven't tried it myself though ... https://www.slant.co/topics/5817/~ways-to-make-a-cross-platform-application[^] But all those upvotes on Slant look a bit fishy though, the upvoters do not show any other activity than their upvote for B4X. :confused:
I could code my mobile apps in Visual Basic? Oh that's awesome. :-D
cheers Chris Maunder
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Have you given WebAssembly/ASP.NET Core Blazor[^] any thoughts?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Yes, many! However, I need a mobile app that can access sensor data so a pure web app isn't going to cut it. If I stuck with Xamarin then I'd certainly be thinking about Blazor because of it's speed, and because I'd truly be working in a single language.
cheers Chris Maunder