Hacker News Reader

Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

HTML5 is cool and you can do a lot with it, but it has some very real drawbacks - like Android.

Also, if you are doing a bunch of optimizations to make it fast on HTML5, then you're basically doing the same work as writing a native app, so what are you gaining by doing a HTML5?

Seriously, at some point you can get a better user experience, have better access to native API's and can really leverage the full abilities of the device by going native. So, you know, go native.

Disclaimer: I have wrote HTML5 mobile apps and I think it's a great developer experience, but it feels worse as a user.

View on HN

But this argument makes no sense. When you go native, you have to write N number of apps for N number of platforms you want to support. The point is that making a great mobile app is hard no matter what stack you choose to use.

It's also a bit disingenuous to say you are forced to optimize every HTML5 app. The whole point of Sencha's blog post is to advertise the fact that they've abstracted away all those optimizations you need to do so that developers can focus on building cross platform HTML5 mobile apps.

Maybe people that make this argument only care about supporting one (or two) platforms.

IMO as soon as you want to support two platforms natively you've nearly doubled your work.

And if you try to support them by doing web based app you quadrupled your work, only it is on the same code base.

Where are you getting your "quadrupled" number? It makes sense to claim writing two native apps two cover two platforms is roughly twice the work of covering one platform, but in now way does the claim that writing an HTML5 app requires 4 times the time and effort it takes to write a native app. If that were true we wouldn't even be debating this topic today.

HTML5 is not the only way to achieve cross-platform. In native world, HTML5 is just "one of them". There are many cross-platform frameworks and you can choose any one you like. Look this report.

Cross-Platform Developer Tools 2012 | VisionMobile http://www.visionmobile.com/product/cross-platform-developer... > the landscape of 100+ cross-platform developer tools

Actually this is a big reason I dislike HTML5 (or I think HTML5 is wrong). Developers don't have freedom on languages and APIs. There are no healthy competition.

And don't forget that web browser itself is a multi-platform application. You can use Chrome and Firefox on Windows/Mac/iOS/Android. These are written in a "cross-platform language" C++.

In addition, most video games are written in C++ so many games are released on multi platforms (Xbox360/PS3/PC/iOS/Android). I suspect most web developers don't even know this...

> HTML5 is not the only way to achieve cross-platform.

Nobody here, as far as I could tell, was suggesting that.

> In addition, most video games are written in C++ so many games are released on multi platforms (Xbox360/PS3/PC/iOS/Android). I suspect most web developers don't even know this...

But wait, aren't iOS apps written in Objective-C using Cocoa Touch and Android apps written in Java? I don't think you can simply write your app in C++ and call it cross platform.

> Actually this is a big reason I dislike HTML5 (or I think HTML5 is wrong). Developers don't have freedom on languages and APIs. There are no healthy competition.

I've honestly never heard lack of freedom as an argument against HTML5. This argument is strange. How is iOS any more "free" than the web?

> at some point you can get a better user experience, have better access to native API's and can really leverage the full abilities of the device by going native

This is very increasingly untrue.

>, if you are doing a bunch of optimizations to make it fast on HTML5, then you're basically doing the same work as writing a native app

This has never, ever been true for me, not even counting the fact that I don't have to make 3-4x the number of native apps, especially given BB10 coming out next year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com