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Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

The primary advantage of a web platform for webby, desktop and mobile applications is to be able to write one set of code that works on all devices.

It seems strange to me that so many young developers don't seem to comprehend why that is a big advantage.

I want to code in CoffeeScript and use nice simple APIs.

I'm sorry but Objective-C is outdated and overly complex. The only reason people accept and even learn to love it is because if you are an Apple person you have to. You have no choice in the matter. Its like people in North Korea have to love their Dear Father Leader or something.

I'm sure the Android Java libraries are much better than before, but they are still based on what I consider to be a dated type of development. The framework APIs are inferior and constantly specifying types is unnecessary.

To me CoffeeScript with Node.js modules are the state of the art in terms of language design, dependency management, and API design.

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Maybe they are old enough to remember the last time someone promised write once run everywhere.

It's a bit ironic that Java finally caught on as an interactive programming language once it was put into a runtime environment that is intimately joined to the design of the Android OS?

Operating systems have substantial differences, and they compete based on those differences. Apps that ignore the unique features of each OS they run on are impoverished and uncompetitive.

I've been programming for 20+ years and have coded in nearly everything from ASM, old school PASCAL, and FoxPro to Java, Lisp, VHDL, Erlang, OCaml. I can say without a doubt that coding in CS (with LESS, Bootstrap, Backbone/Underscore) is one of the best experiences I've had. While there are still numerous things to complain about in this environment, the best thing is that it makes me extremely productive in designing UI-driven apps.

Currently I'm working on a project that is extremely heavy on the client-side and despite being the solo front-end coder, the four back-end folks can't keep up with my (RESET API) demands. Not that I am some rockstar 10x programmer - it's just that the current environment makes me the most productive I can be. With a few scripts and editor shortcuts, my workflow from code change to browser-refresh is near instantaneous.

Actually, I think the case for web gets even more compelling with Meteor, where you can really share components across both sides of the wire.

As I alluded to at the end, the web case makes a lot of sense for companies with unique services who want to roll out across platforms. e.g. If you're a corporate insurance broker, you have a few hundred users who just want some conveniences from native apps, that's a good case for HTML5.

Another example I saw recently is an agency making "viral" apps. Just one-time apps for short contests and so on, and they can do a great job with HTML5.

Deep-level integration though needs native, whether you like Obj-C or not.

Yes Meteor is very amazing. Of course they have another HTML5 thing in WebRTC that when it becomes well supported (actually fairly soon in Firefox and Chrome) has peer-to-peer data capabilities that for many applications supersede server-based models. Of course, I know that for some applications, that won't be workable, and there are problems to solve, but I believe that most of the problems with synchronization and data ownership have reasonable solutions in peer environments.

I am still hoping that PhoneGap/Cordova will work out ok for my next 'native' app. Have you found that it isn't adequate?

I'm the OP, so yes, I found it inadequate :). For a podcast app, even using PhoneGap (rather than browser-based web app) would lead to several issues:

* Hard or impossible to do rich, interactive widgets, notifications, and lock-screen in HTML5

* Unclear path for downloading and saving large files. (Might be possible, but again would need native bridges or native code; forget about Ajax and offline HTML5 storage.)

* Mediocre UI. If you work hard at it, you can build a reasonable UI, but one of the feedbacks we got from reviews and reporters is how they like the way we implemented Android's Holo look-and-feel. A lot of people feel an emotional attachment to their OS and appreciate apps that fit within the guidelines.

Over the years I've learned in the region of 40 programming languages and am fluent in about a dozen. I spent 9 years as a web developer and switched to iOS using ObjC a couple of years ago.

Objective-C is by far my favorite language. I can code up an ObjC solution to a problem far faster than I could with JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java, Python or anything else I've used. I adore ObjC's meta programming capabilities, its simplicity, its fixes for issues I encountered in C++, the way it gives high-level abstractions if I want them but allows me to drop to low-level C if I need to, and its encouragement of self-documenting code.

More importantly than any of that, I have more fun with Objective-C than any other language.

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