Android PHP option planned for Javaphobes | Hacker News Reader

Android PHP option planned for Javaphobes

theregister.co.uk

12 pointsyanw21 comments

Along with every other scripting language. Not news until someone has working apps running on most phones. Until then it's a toy. ASE isn't even available in the market yet. How is distribution going to work for that? I don't think .apks support dependencies, so at this point you'll practically have to ship your own version of the runtime with the app.

err APKs can reference other library APKs

But they can't pull in library APKs on install like in a fully functional package manager.

I'd rather use JS on V8 to develop for android. Not necessarily nodejs but an in-house brew made by google, optimized for android and tailored to web hobbyists.

A thousand times yes to this comment. I have had a great deal of fun playing with the V8 engine, and it would beyond cool to write code for the Android using it. Android Chrome already has it integrated, so it should definitely be feasible.

My prototype of a pure JavaScript chinese checkers runs fine on my Nexus One http://halma.artifia.com

I created a small wrapper for it, similar to PhoneGap, to be able to put it in the Marketplace, too (not yet published, for lack of visual polish).

Beautiful. I like the simplicity of it.

Thanks - the graphics for the stones are actually from a friend's iPhone app. Unfortunately I can't find it in the app store anymore, he seems to have removed it. My main interest with the prototype was to see if the AI in JavaScript would work.

You should make an iPad version and sell it on the app store.

A wooden background is all you need, something like:

http://www.gametableapp.com/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/31/game-table-ipad/

Erm... this is great. But what if I'm a PHPophobe and a Javaphobe?

http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

I'd love .NET... Not that I love msft but it's a language that's got it together to build some serious apps. Not saying bad things about Java, but I'm not personally a fan.

My bad - it seems Mono is already supported for Android http://stackoverflow.com/questions/214615/will-google-androi...

A Javaphobe is, most probably, a C#phobe. It's worth to see how it does work out and how popular .NET on Android becomes.

It's not like Google will try to prevent you from writing apps in any language you see fit. The goal of Android is to fragment the marketplace to prevent Apple from becoming a monopoly.

I was expecting app engine support for PHP before this.

Why can't they just let us us a gcc toolchain and be done with it.

How's this? http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

Is that for writing entire applications in C or C++ or just parts of them?

Parts. But major parts if you want to, see e.g. the Android port of Quake 3: ~250,000 lines of C and a few hundred lines of Java glue.

lol this makes me facepalm. The Android SDK is super easy to use with Java. It's not like some of the major Java frameworks.... buuut whatever floats people's boats. At least this is perfectly fine to do with Android. good luck getting PHP iPhone apps approved. :P

What is the goal of using something like php-cli without popular modules (blah-blah.so) as device-scripting language?

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