Hacker News Reader

I was wondering if there are other alternatives out there like Xamarin. I've used their Mono for Android software and was good but sadly, the prices went too high this time so if you want to use Visual Studio you need to add a good amount of money to make it true. :(

View on HN

Titanium would be the closest alternative that I can think of. Titanium allows for apps to be be developed using JavasScript and then compile natively for Android, iOS, and others.

they dont compile JS natively. Your code is still in javascript but get executed in a native shell, instead of using a web view , but there is no js compilation into native code.

Thanks. I didn't realize that it was still running interpreting the javascript after a project was built for a device that made calls to native interfaces. My guess is that it would be close to native performance. I was under the impression that Titanium would compile to java bytecode for android and likewise for iOS, but I was wrong.

Titanium, last I checked also do not support all the native API's like Xamarin does. Six months ago I did not see support for the ActionBar for Android apps. Even though the Titanium API is supposed to work cross platform, usually there are functions or settings that only works on either Android or iOS. It's messy in my oppinion, but it is a lot cheaper.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com