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Best Platform For Hobbyist Mobile Development?
An anonymous reader notes a blog entry, possibly his own, comparing and evaluating 8 mobile platforms from the point of view of their suitability for a hobbyist programmer. Covered are iPhone, Java ME, Windows Mobile, Linux, Palm, Brew, Symbian, and Blackberry. The writer seems open-minded and is a strong fan of free software, but he gives the edge to Windows Mobile for this class of developer.
This piece reads more like a stream-of-consciousness than a carefully prepared technical article - maybe it's not meant to be considered as such. The author doesn't event attempt to justify a number of his assertions - in fact most of them seem to be based on some kind of vague "feeling" rather than concrete data or research.
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Not only is it not well written, many of the platforms are there just for show, as he knows nothing about them.
Examples:
iPhone
It's not clear he's developed for it. He spends his time whining about the closed SDK, which is valid enough, but could have simply said "Apple doesn't welcome outside developers currently". And left it off.
Blackberry
I can just quote him
"Next comes the blackberry, I have no idea about this as a programming platform so cannot say much about the SDK support."
Brew
And here:
Brew as a platform is great but its not a platform for a hobbyist programmer. The tools are "supposed to be good. I have never directly worked on a brew project so cannot say much about it."
Linux
(goes off boring us about his dislike of GPL (fine, but out of place). And then finally gets to the matter
(His JavaME and Windows Mobile coverage is decentish)
Overall, I had my hopes up when I saw this title -- I was hoping to get a better review of many platforms...and we do, so long as those platforms are one's the author used.
Right off the bat, two very large platforms, he says 'I've never done anything with this one.' So he counts it out -- why even put it in the article?! My minimal experience with Blackberry development seemed pleasant enough -- it was easy to compile the software and get it on the phone, and it was easy enough to execute it. Granted, it was a loaner blackberry so I only got it for a few days, which in my case, was enough time to tinker with example code.
As for Brew, which the author also states he has no experience with, but goes on to talk about the horrendous signing requirements...which I guess is better than the one-sentence approach to Blackberry.
As for Symbian, wtf is he talking about? I had a good friend that was porting some small-time development house's flagship phone cardgame suite from, believe it or not, XBox to a Symbian smart phone. I don't recall what version of the OS it was, but it certainly didn't seem like it was a pain to sign anything. He showed me the entire process - save code in IDE, compile code, open phone in My Computer > Bluetooth Devices section, drag-n-drop the compiled package, go on phone, run program.
He did however complain about how picky Symbian was about memory management, and that it was extremely annoying in that it would tell you about every byte you didn't clean up perfectly when your application closed. I suppose thats a good thing and a bad thing. Maybe they had some weird dev phone that didn't need signing, I don't know -- they were big enough to have a developer XBox 360 several months before it was officially released.
For some reason, I have a feeling this guy was just running out of material and got bored.
Of course, if it's just for yourself, you should check out the OpenMoko. It is the most open phone with the best developer support. You are literally writing GTK apps running on real Xorg and real Linux. And the whole point is that it's open, so no vendor trying to lock you out.
And the Neo 1973 GTA02 hardware is looking to be pretty sweet. Includes 3D accelerometer, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and touch screen (with rumor of enabling multitouch through a driver update).
I don't have a lot of time, but I'll just quickly give you all my take, without going into details too much.
1. J2ME. It's the Java you all know and either love or hate, but with a different library. Some things work the same way as they do on the desktop. Some things work differently. And some don't work at all. Generally, there will be differences from device to device. Lots of devices come with J2ME implementations. Developing tools are freely available. J2ME seems to be a relatively stable target.
2. Linux. It's Linux. In theory, it's the same as desktop, server, etc. Linux. You should be able to use the same developing tools and libraries, which are freely available. In practice, devices may have odd differences and limitations compared to desktops running Linux. Sometimes, vendors go out of their way to introduce incompatibilities. It's a mine field. The number of devices Linux runs on is limited, and the ones you can reasonably limited are fewer still. Although the core of the platform is stable, parts of it are very much moving targets.
3. Windows Mobile (formerly known an Windows CE and Pocket PC). Pretends to be Windows but isn't. The platform has odd limitations and restrictions that differ from version to version and from device to device. Developer tools are available, but not necessarily free of charge. It all depends on the target device, its configuration, and the version of Windows Mobile. In general, you will have to pay for developer tools, compile different versions of your app for different targets, and pay for signatures on some targets. Many devices come with some incarnation of Windows Mobile on them. The whole platform is a moving target, with incompatibilities introduced at about every release.
The way I see it, of the three, Java wins hands down. It's the only one that is actually workable.
I don't know where Vivek is coming from when he says ``I never thought that Windows Mobile would take the pie, but for a hobbyist programmer they offer the best SDK's and you can make applications without worrying about certificates while testing and debugging. With a windows mobile one really feels in control, if you want to screw up your mobile device its really upto you. One rarely feels tied down the API's are clean and functional. Getting your first demo program onto the device takes a few seconds. It just makes sense to develop for windows mobile. There is almost no need to get your applications signed, at least for testing.''
To me, it has been the exact opposite of that. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare to figure out what you have to download to get up and running. You can compile binaries for th platform with various tool chains, including some (user friendly for me) open source ones, but they won't run on all devices, as they will be lacking the right signatures. If you do get your application signed (which is costly; you have to sign every version of every exe, dll, and cab), it won't work on older releases that don't support code signing. The platform is almost ridiculously limited, and limitations aren't consistant across versions (e.g. you may or may not be able to get at a given file using the file open common dialog).
I'm thinking Vivek just tested things using one device, and was lucky enough that it didn't throw a tantrum.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
``I just don't get why J2ME development has to be so complicated: weird acronyms, half a dozen versions''
It's the Java way, or maybe the Enterprise way. They like acronyms and buzzwords and pretending they've invented something new, when it's really something that has existed outside the Java world for ages, or a workaround for some limitation of Java.
``Sun is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; give it another few years and they'll have thoroughly destroyed the mobile Java market as well, just like they did with the Java desktop market.''
I believe Microsoft takes the credit for that one. Sun's premise was "compile once, run anywhere". Microsoft made it not work on Windows. Not being able to reach 90+% of your target audience = dead product.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Long story short, I thought Java would be perfect for developing an app I could run on the desktop or PocketPC; instead it is a nightmare. I ended up writing my app on PerlCE, a port of perl to the PocketPC. Works for me, but it's nothing you could redistribute and has plenty of rough edges. In fact it turned out as a command-line app which wasn't really what I set out to accomplish.
Actually, PocketPC's in general are really going down the tubes. All the software Windows Mobile 5 is awful, unstable, and simplistic. It's so unstable as to be almost unusable. I think everybody at HP and Microsoft has moved on to smartphones, the PocketPC has a strong odor of decomposition about it. Sucks for those of us whose workplaces disallow cellphones.
This article contains less information than you'd get from 5 minutes of google searches on the names of the various technologies. Why reward such haphazardly written articles with frontpage coverage and ad impressions?
The author's few actual opinions about technologies are equally worthless; his rambling about Palm and J2ME makes it clear that he's never actually used the technology for more than a few minutes, and the ranting about Linux's license and the hassle of 'signing' applications makes you wonder if he's ever written any software at all. Someone who considers the Java Mobile API 'beyond him' probably shouldn't be writing articles about programming.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I do mobile platform evangelism for a living -- I very much like hearing what people have to say about platforms and developing for them. But this was disappointing from any of the angles I look at it: if he actually did bother to do research, then we in the mobile space are doing a miserable job at educating the hobbyist (he obviously had a hard time finding the BlackBerry JDE or a clear enough explanation of Java ME that tells him that 90% of devices out there with Java ME are MIDP); if he didn't bother doing research, then it almost sounds like he went out of the way to prove that Windows Mobile is the way to go... and from my own experience, for the average hobbyist, WinMobile does the trick but only so far (i.e. good toolkits and APIs but only if you want to code in C, if you want to do .NET you've got to shell out for Visual Studio); if he really didn't try, then it says something worse about the person who thought this merited highlighting.
It may just say that the mobile space is really not targeting the hobbyist... should we change that?
If someone has actual experience in this, would much welcome reading it.
***Foucault is watching you..***
You know, I did some J2EE development recently (after not touching Java for a while) and I thought I was learning a new language (and I don't mean a programming language): J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, JAF, JMS, JATO, JSF, JSS, JTA, JTS, JAXM, JAXP, JSS, JSSE... (if I got some of them wrong, no big deal, the way things are going they will be correct eventually).
How many different 3 letter combinations starting with J can still be available?
P.S please don't work it out, it was a rhetorical question
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I used to work as a software consultant for a large company who shall remain nameless, making those in-car systems that integrate Navigation/cellphone/internet/car control all in one built-in unit in the car's dashboard.
They wanted to get away from their usual approach of having to make a whole new custom system for each car project, so we made a custom hardware platform running Windows-CE that we could sell to different car manufacturers just by modifying the front panel and changing some of the graphics.
Anyway I just told you all that to establish my experience and tell you that porting CE to a custom platform and developing drivers etc. for CE sucks very badly compared to doing the same with Linux due partly to the poor documentation and lack of support from Microsoft, and also that CE itself and its APIs are very badly designed and structured compared to Linux.
It starts from what J2ME is. Or rather what it is not.
First and foremost, it is not a product -- at least of the the company that controls it. You can't buy J2ME and plop it on your phone; it has to be put there by the manufacturer, who in turn sells them through the wireless carriers, who don't give a shit about anything unless it can be turned into a monthly service fee.
Secondly -- and this accounts for the alphabet soup issue -- J2ME isn't really a platform. It's more like a family of specifications, or at least it is "marketed" (?) that way. Sun's direct audience for J2ME isn't users, it isn't developers, nor is it enterprises. It is device manufacturers. Since devices come in all shapes and sizes and capabilities, J2ME is balkanized so that there is a J2ME specification that work on just about anything more powerful than a PIC. Furthermore any J2ME implementation is going to extend the standard both with non-standard capabilities and with a non-standardizable selections of optional features. Which means that if you aren't careful you end up with a program that doesn't run on all.
If you step back and squint, J2ME is handled exactly the opposite way that Java is handled. There are no standardized implementations you can deploy on, not even on PDAs, which would bring a lot of ideas and talent in from the developer community. This diametrically opposite effect explains why Java, which is so important in the enterprise, is a toy platform in the mobile world. You either develop for a specific device, or you develop trivial games that don't cause a lot of grief when they don't work cross platform.
It's not entirely Sun's fault, at least on the mobile end. Our de-regulated telecom model means that the wireless companies are gatekeepers between developers and consumers. However, the failure to extend Java to the PDA was a lost opportunity to gain momentum before PDAs lost ground to smart phones, and smart phones lose ground to closed devices like the iPhone.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Not as a hobbyist but as a professional developer i have little experiences of both.
:(.
Whenever i need to do something on windows mobile/wince i never commit on a deadline because you don't know where will you get stuck with so many libs (without source code) around. Microsoft is not going to support you until you really mean something to them and windows mobile documents sucks.
Some point of time, I had to demo VoIP on wince. I plan to use wince messenger but it was returning 421(IIRC). I was using M$ SIP stack so code was not available to me. There was no way to find out the root cause until I get M$ support. Luckily i thought little differently and figured out that there could be some problem in Wi-Fi driver(it was developed by me again). NDIS API for maximum data rate was not correct. I don't understand how can someone think of development on M$ platform as a HOBBY with such a bad documentation and no support.
Later,i had to port Linux kernel on a alien platform with some minimal applications (e.g ftp, ssh ) within a month. I am basically a network engineer with no embedded experience at all but have some user level Linux experience. With the help of community(IRC) i successfuly completed the task within the specified time. I was amazed the way linux kernel is written. You dont have to do anything to port on a new device. Error handling is great. Error reporting is excellent and tools really rocks. No OS give support over IM as Linux has. I feel, Linux is best for developing applications for mobile devices(at least for command line applications, haven't tried GUI ever). You don't have fear to get locked in with issues in some alien binary.
Windows mobile looks good at beginning but once you go inside it, its all muddy and you find yourself helpless. Still trying to figure out what is equivalent of kernel magic number in windows mobile
PS: Sorry for broken English. I am not a native speaker.
Since I've worked pretty hard on it, I'll take a moment or two to promote my own 'platform': Hecl, at http://www.hecl.org./ It's a scripting language built on top of J2ME, which means that no, you probably shouldn't write games with it, but on the other hand, it should make it far easier for the 'average Joe' to actually be able to successfully create an application, and for a good developer to do things much faster than with J2ME.
Also, for fun, I created a prediction market about which platform will dominate, but since it's not played with real money, it's not worth all that much:
http://home.inklingmarkets.com/market/show/6481
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Sun is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; give it another few years and they'll have thoroughly destroyed the mobile Java market as well, just like they did with the Java desktop market. You should try NetBeans 6, the developers have implemented great support for developing J2ME applications. There is even a GUI/Flow designer for Mobile devices included. It's true that before I had to spend a week configuring just to get Hello World up and running, but with a clean NetBeans 6 install I(and probably all of you) can do it within seconds. Also an emulator is included so you can test/debug on your computer, still if you want to test your application on your mobile device you just have to copy the compiled jar file over.
There are several samples included: like sounds, graphics, basic networking, games. I recommend everyone who is interested in developing application for mobile devices to check it out
But if you already hate Java, then just stick to the Windows platform. It's also very good.
Creating a new device using WinCE or Linux. Advantage Linux
I've been to all the MS "Training" Tech seminars on WINCE and Mobile .NET. I've asked alot of questions. I usually bring a stack of questions with me because MS trots out "experts" at these things. I have only once received an answer to what I saw as a common question. I've seen countless Demos. I even tried it on two different devices. At first it all looks great but I quickly ran into problems that only peeking at the source can root out, which in many cases is not allowed.
Under Linux I get all the source I need (and then some) to understand the problem. I can turn to the community for help. And by community I usually mean the author of the code I'm having trouble with. I can reuse a ton of code. Hell, sometimes I only have to write a surprisingly small amount of code to accomplish what I need.
The hardest part I've found in developing Embedded Linux Applications/Devices is getting the boss to open the code (Not always necessary but I insist on it every chance I get).
Yeah VS integration is nice, but then I have to use Visual Studio, not something I like to be forced into. I have no problem using a variety of different tools and toolkits to get the job done on Linux.
I am quite fond of QT, and nothing beats the customization of the kernel. I can test on the desktop, cross compile and test on the device.
I've done Brew and a few of the others, I have no real interest in Cell Phone development though, so I can give no real opinion on how they stack up against the penguin.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I'm writing an OpenSource J2ME application as an hobby (shameless plug: http://jbit.sourceforge.net/) and I don't think J2ME it's that complicated. Its basic API (MIDP1) is very simple. Its second incarnation (MIDP2) is also simple. There are a lot of optional APIs, but I believe you can write interesting applications without them. Sure, if you want to use GPS, you need to use a specialized API and not every phone will support it. I think it's fair.
But this IMHO is missing the point. Are there any other platforms besides J2ME? I'm sorry but I don't see that many SmartPhones around me (Italy). Most people I know think they are expensive and bulky. I have a friend who still has a Nokia 3310. Laugh as much as you like, but its display has better visibility under direct sunlight than most "Smart" phones I've seen.
Java EE is an utter mess, in my opinion. Too many acronyms and buzzwords and oh god the XML configuration files where everything has to be configured in three different places and then when you get something wrong it breaks and you can't figure out why... *deep breath*
That was my impression of it anyway. Some of it was incredibly useful, but all the unnecessary configuration just got in the way.
J2ME is nowhere near as complicated or difficult to get up and running. Eclipse, the EclipseME plugin and a compatible device are all you really need. The plugin does all the essential stuff for you, and having bluetooth on both the device and your PC makes deployment easy. For more serious stuff I use J2ME Polish (as in Mr Sheen), which handles handset compatibility and APIs quite well, as well as giving more control over the GUI.
That said, I got the distinct impression from TFA that, on the subject of J2ME, the author didn't have a clue what he was talking about:
For a start, MIDP 2.0 is part of the CLDC Wireless Toolkit. And as for "where am I supposed to test it"... well, the toolkit comes with an emulator for precisely that purpose. Most modern mobile phones are also MIDP 2.0 / CLDC 1.1 compatible, so that shouldn't be a problem. There are also optional APIs that the mobile manufacturers can provide according to the capabilities of the phone (for example, the Nokia N95 contains a GPS unit, so the Location API is included).
I'm not saying that it's the best mobile development platform out there, as I've come close to tearing my hair out when faced with some of it's limitations. But if there's one thing I can't fault it on, it's the shallow learning curve. I suspect the author wasn't really trying.
Its almost impossible to test the application without signing it.
Not true for s60 python scripts. You just copy them over and run them from the interpreter. Done.
Developing native applications is only for people who plan to develop free applications or for big organizations, getting a certificate for a free application can take weeks if not months. Its no longer seems like a platform for hobbyist programmers.
So, em, why this big imperative to develop "native" applications then? I thought python, perl, ruby, tcl/tk did away with the "native application" bigotry along time ago...
The python implementation for s60v3 is actually pretty clean. I seem to recall an article from one of the id guys (was it Carmack or Romero?) on the nightmare of developing Java ME apps, what with differences in implementation from one device to another.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
Hello.
At an amateur level, J2ME is the best because is well documented, reasonable IDEs and free. It is not very powerful or fast, but it is simple and will do a lot of things.
At a professional level, Symbian and Windows CE/Mobile are the viable options. If you want to build a decent UI, get good performance and use decent IDEs and get lots of resources, that's the way.
Linux is the most promising new platform, but I tried to get into openmoko, as a useful hobby, but the development tools are a lot different of what I'm used to... It is taking a lot more time than I expected to learn the thing.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
It is a shame that he doesn't bother to even mention anything about the BlackBerry platform. First and foremost, it *is* J2ME. (well, for the most part) You can run standard J2ME stuff on the BlackBerry, but you can also run stuff written against the BlackBerry-specific API. RIM provides free development tools, and while their own IDE is pretty poor, integrating their tools with the NetBeans IDE is pretty easy.
The biggest advantage of BlackBerry Java development, IMHO, is that the OS itself is practically a JVM, and the built-in apps are also Java. On most phones, running a J2ME app requires waiting forever for the thing to start and never integrate well. On the BlackBerry, your own Java apps start instantly and can look just like all the other built-in apps. Finally, BlackBerry is a common platform across a wide range of popular devices, so you'll always have plenty of potential users even if you build BlackBerry-specific apps.
And now for the shameless plug...
Back when I got my BlackBerry, I found that there were no decent available E-Mail clients for them. (only the service-based E-Mail, which stinks if you're not hooked to a corporate BIS server.) So, I kicked off an open-source project to write my own:
LogicMail - http://www.logicprobe.org/proj/logicmail
Oh really? If J2ME is a toy platform, what is the real platform then? J2ME is deployed on billions of devices and it would be insane for any ISV to ignore that. Yes, the platform is balkanized and you have to perform a lot of painful compatibility testing to ensure that your software works on a wide range of devices. Exactly the same problem you would have had if you wanted to deploy commerical apps targetting GNU/Linux. And yes, write once run anywhere is a myth. But what is your alternative? The Windows Mobile market is only about a few millions so that is right out.
And which of Investigators, Sims 2, VRally-3D, Extreme Air Snowboarding 3D, Tomb Raider, Virtua Tennis and 3D Golf xPro is a trivial game? Which of them is developed for a specific device?
Football Odds
Just want to throw a couple more into the mix.
/. before, but it is basically a completely open source platform. You can program with GTK+ or now that Qtopia has been released for the Neo1973 you can also try your hand at Qt. Very volatile project right now, but quickly stabilizing and progressing.
First, SuperWaba. It is by no means a fully feature platform, but if you are just doing some basic programming and want to be able to support multiple platforms (WinMo, Palm, and Blackberry) then it is fairly easy to get up and running. Also, it based on java, so 90% of java examples will "just work" when programming with SuperWaba. FWIW, that is what we are using for our deployment of a mobile solution for our company. Also, it is GPL for the community version and if you purchase support, you can have the LGPL version.
Second, OpenMoko. It has been discussed on
I know that neither of those have the numbers of the 8 that the article evaluated, but for certain cases they are very viable platforms. Also, both have a lot more freedom than most of those platforms as well.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Seems like we're all trying to figure out what is a good hobbyist platform. So here are my thoughts, but any additional suggestions welcome:
.NET is well known
1. Low cost of entry -- if the hardware is expensive or the toolkits are expensive, it's not a good hobby tool
2. Ubiquity -- if the hardware is hard to find or only three people have it (and two of them are in Zagreb) it probably won't build a good community of enthusiasts
3. Plentiful and understandable documentation -- if information on it is hard to find or understand, you wouldn't learn about it to start with
4. Uses languages I already know -- why learn something new?
5. Vibrant community -- you want to feel part of something interesting, most of the time
6. Easy tools to use -- good for the non-coder just-get-it-done-so-that-I-can-show-my-buddies
7. Good tools to use -- good for the uber coder who just-get-it-done-so-that-I-can-show-my-buddies
8. Simple distribution -- I want to be able to share my apps with my friends or the world.
9. Path from hobby to profession -- making a living out of it!
Under these criteria, I'd rank major mobile platforms this way:
1 - Java ME (Ubiquitous on even low-cost cellphones with low cost data plans, easy to learn, low cost if you already have the phone, tools are free and some are even good, documentation is available although mas-o-menos, distribution is reasonably easy in most cases, path to profession is clear although bumpy. Java is well known.)
2 - WinMobile (Ubiquitous -- getting a cheap PocketPC these days isn't difficult, easy to learn if you have the good tools -- thought a pain if you use the free tools, great tools although the best are expensive!, documentation is plentiful, distribution is generally easy as long as you're not trying to hit SmartPhone platform, easy path to profession), community exists but probably not passionate [I went to a winmobile developer conference and the folks there looked as excited as someone waiting for a colonoscopy].
3 - Linux (if you can find a Zaurus on the cheap, and are already a Linux coder or can pick up *nix thinking, it's a good platform for making some very complete applications. Development tools are ubiquitous but can be hard to figure out for the beginner, but the community will help you out through building makefiles. path to profession on mobile linux limited given small range of devices, unless you're a consultant). C is well known. Other platforms (Python, Perl, ROR) are available, though not sure about the mobile side.
4- Symbian (devices are ubiquitous in europe, coding for it can suck, distribution can be tricky at best, but there's enough community support that it may be worthwhile, although if I were a hobbyist I'd try different things. C is well known but the API set I've heard is miserable.
5 - BlackBerry (Easy to find devices although service can be expensive, tools are great if you don't need a visual IDE (visual IDE costs more overall because you need a Blackberry enterprise server + MDS), documentation is very good, community is animated though smaller, path to profession is clear. Java, XHTML, ECMA script are well known.
6- Palm OS (easy to find cheap devices, no services required, tools are adequate, documentation is solid, not exactly great for quick throwaway apps though. C and Java ME available
7 - BREW: BREW is designed to discourage hobbyists. The point is to make it so that mobile operators only have to deal with pros or companies that put money into the bucket.
Any other thoughts?
***Foucault is watching you..***