ghenne

With PhoneGap having been discontinued, you'll need to find a replacement when it's time to update your app. Cordova still works great, so you won't have to make a lot of changes.

Have a look at VoltBuilder as a replacement for PhoneGap. It does the same job (or more) and it's up to date.

Disclosure - I'm on the VoltBuilder team (and a fellow Canuck). I'm happy to answer questions.

Here's the Migration Guide:

https://volt.build/news/2020/08/12/migrating-from-phonegap.h...

My team has been working on a modern alternative for a few months now. With a couple months of beta under our belts, we’re ready to go live tomorrow (Aug 11) at noon EST. Our goal is an easy-to-use standalone service. Visit us at https://volt.build to sign up and start building! New signups are free for 30 days.

PS. I've been a PG user since 2010. Many fond memories of the early days!

Plans have not been finalized, so it's a placeholder for now. You can see more here: https://volt.build/plan/

Hey HN, I’m George and I co-developed VoltBuilder (https://volt.build) with James and Tomo. VoltBuilder is a modern replacement for PhoneGap.

Early in the COVID crisis, I was running out of work and looking for a new project. I saw Adobe was abandoning PhoneGap, a tool used by thousands to convert web apps to Android and iOS native apps. (I’ve been a PhoneGap user for 10 years, so I knew I’d miss it)

I spent a weekend going through the Android, iOS and Cordova documentation to see if it would be possible to replicate what PhoneGap does and give myself and all those users some hope. Reading hundreds of messages on StackOverflow helped me figure out some stuff that is really, seriously not documented anywhere.

By Monday, I had something like a POC working. I checked with my long term collaborators, James and Tomo. They were similarly underworked, so we decided to go ahead with the other 98% of the job to make a working product.

Technologies used include Python, Node, Jekyll, Auth0, Stripe, Cordova, Xcode, Android SDK, Express, Helmet, JWT, Flask, Boto3 and more.

VoltBuilder now has a website, a build engine, queuing and billing. We’ve built the server infrastructure to spin up multiple builds at the same time and are starting to test that.

It’s deployed in beta production. About 50 beta testers have thrown thousands of jobs at it. We’re focusing on building a community to get our first users and gather as much feedback as possible. Pricing is still up in the air, but the pricing page shows where we are heading.

Thank you for reading this far. I would love to get your feedback on VoltBuilder and to answer questions.

For Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android: check out AppStudio. It lets you code in VB like BASIC. A VB like Design Screen lets you drag and drop visual controls. Output is JavaScript/HTML so it runs everywhere. (Disclosure - I'm on the team) https://www.appstudio.dev/

They're certainly teaching programming to girls. In a country where most jobs are off limits to females, developing apps might be an interesting opportunity.

That's true of any subject. I think it's often more a factor of how a subject is taught than the subject itself. I've seen the curriculum they put together - it's pretty good.

The other side of this is that many kids will now be exposed to this who did not have a chance before. A few of them will discover a new life's passion. We can expect to see some great Saudi programmers in a few years. Education is a good thing.

Think of a Balance Sheet vs. Profit and Loss. Yes, I had a good base of assets after I left. But after that, I wanted to make sure I made more than I spent. Too many founders get lucky and blow it all. Think about sustainability.

Doing what you want, having no employees, and generating enough income for all your fun is a worthy goal!

I quit when it stopped being fun. It had gone public and there were a couple of hundred employees. I was in the office on New Year's Day, celebrating the fact that I had been into work every day that year. I was flying somewhere twice a week, and spent all my time talking to lawyers, bankers, accountants and brokers. Customers only when they were threatening lawsuits. Conflict with another cofounder didn't help. My father's passing was one more message.

I started as a creative person, programming. I realized I had to go back to that to be happy. So I typed an email to my cofounders on the spot. Three days later, I was out of there.

I was fortunate to remain good friends with most of my cofounders and key employees. I've had a blast in the succeeding years - making a better income most years and getting to do things I enjoy. Having time for a great wife and kids makes it even better.

It was the best decision I ever made.

1964 - my dad taught me programming on IBM EAM equipment. My kids are 3rd gen programmers!

Undocumented feature: If you put _subject into the name property of an input, it will be used as the subject of the email.

Which products do you think do a good job?

The term Hypertext was coined by Ted Nelson, probably 1965. Check out his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines. He envisioneers the internet quite well.

blinking.

Here is the code in an App Studio project:

http://blog.nsbasic.com/?p=1060

Runs fine on an iPhone 5!

The one in the html should not be there.

Some things not to teach:

Don't do: Numerical analysis, Compiler design, OS programming, Real time coding

Good idea! Some things to teach...

HTML JavaScript programming, Practical SQL/SQLite usage, Project Management, Visual Studio .NET

In our case (NS Basic/App Studio) we wrote a translator for VB style BASIC to JavaScript.

We wanted to create a cross platform development that could target iOS, Android and other mobile platforms. We started the project about 2 years ago, and saw a few key developments in the JavaScript space.

1. HTML5: the extensions did a lot to move it from a web scripting language to something that could be used for real applications. The Cache Manifest allowed the developer to specify a list of files to be stored on the device, so the app could run offline, with no access to a server.

2. Home Screen: The mobile platforms added the ability to pin web apps to the Home screen with their own icon, making it possible to start them much like native apps.

3. Performance: Work by the browser folks on the internals of the JavaScript engine resulted in huge boosts in performance. The results are in this table: http://www.nsbasic.com/speedtest.htm. You can see the transition from early BlackBerrys being able to run a few hundred JS loops per second to the Motorola Xoom at 718,000. The benchmark is simplistic, but the message is clear: JavaScript on mobile device is 1000 times faster than a few years ago.

It turned out that it was fairly straight forward to write the Translator. Yes, there were enough weird edge cases to question anyone's sanity to do this again, but the result works well. All the control structures translated one to one, so there was little or no drop in performance.

We then built a Visual Studio style IDE around it, with support for frameworks like jQuery Mobile, jqWidgets and Sencha to build a complete dev environment. It's been a lot of fun.

(and yes, you can use JavaScript instead of BASIC if you want!)

My dad taught me programming in 1964, on IBM equipment where you used patch cables to write code. I was 10 at the time. Been programming ever since. I'm teaching my kids now - they are both using Scratch, which makes them 3rd generation.

There are some interesting projects out there for you. One of them is NS Basic/App Studio, which provide a VB like environment, then generates the JavaScript, HTML and CSS. (You can also program in JavaScript.) I agree - dev environments have to become more user friendly to be really good. (disclosure - I'm one of the guys having fun working on the NSB project)

We've been aware of how slow CF is on Windows CE for a while. Here are some benchmarks we have run:

CuWin 3500, CE5, NS Basic/CE 8 NS Basic/CE: 26529 loops/second Microsoft .NET: 133 loops/second

Acer beTouch E101 Windows Mobile 6.5, 528 mhz, NS Basic/CE 8.0 NS Basic/CE: NS Basic/CE: 16669 loops/second Microsoft .NET: 3060 loops/second

CuWin 5500, CE6, NS Basic/CE 8 NS Basic/CE: 14394 loops/second Microsoft .NET: 764 loops/second

i-mate 400mhz, WM5, NS Basic/CE 8.0 NS Basic/CE: 12632 loops/second Microsoft .NET: 1290 loops/second

Running the same test under NS Basic/App Studio, an iPhone 4 scores 282,674, Nexus One is 403,000 and the Motorola Xoom is 718,484. Plainly, Windows CE.NET has a long way to go!

Check out these two slides from the Nokia-Microsoft presentation: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/rip-symbian/ Symbian goes to 0. Meego is cut 75%. Services cut 20%.

As for QT, here is what the press release says:

"Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.

Extending the scope of Qt further will be our first MeeGo-related open source device, which we plan to ship later this year. Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target. "

So, QT on Symbian dies with Symbian, but stays on with crippled Meego.

Here's what is happening. Microsoft wants to buy Nokia, but not with all those buildings full of people. The announcements mean than Nokia can now get to work laying off tens of thousands of people. They don't need 120,000 employees anymore. Everybody involved in Symbian can go. Most of the Meego staff, too, as well as lots of middle and upper management. It won't cost Microsoft a cent in severance pay.

Once it's all cleaned up, Microsoft can complete the purchase. The stock price should be lower too, reducing the total cost further.

Hi Rachel - Good hearing from you!

[Rachel is one of my heros. When most women retire and take up knitting, she started programming. She should be an inspiration to all!]

So far, the best way is to feed the result of App Studio to PhoneGap, which can then create an apk (for Android) or an app that can be submitted to the App Store. Both of those solutions require that you download and configure the SDKs for their platforms. In the case of iOS, you'll also need to deal with the App Store.

OTOH, many apps work nicely as web apps, and it's improving all the time.

The man is right. Of course, you also have to have a good idea.

Here's another copy of the 'interview' with a reply from Bjarne... http://www.nsbasic.com/app/info/interview.htm

NS Basic was actually around long before Palm OS, starting with the Newton. (!) We think /App Studio is our best yet.