Should I Learn To Program iOS Or Android Devices?

HW_Hack writes "In my early career in the '90s I had a hardware tech degree, but also a strong interest in software. I completed software courses in assembly, Pascal, HTML, and C as I prepped for a CS degree. I then got my chance to do hardware design for a major US firm and went that direction for a good 18-year career. I now work in a good sized school district doing IT support work at a large high school. I plan to revive my programming skills this winter so I can write apps for the flood of mobile devices. I am very much platform / OS agnostic and I support on any one day OS X, XP, Win 7, Linux servers, and now iOS as we pilot iPads in our school. My question focuses on three topics: Which programming environment (iOS or Android) is easier to jump into from a technical perspective / number of languages needed to master? Which one has a better SDK ecosystem of documentation, programmer support, and developer community(s)? Where is the market and the money going? I do not expect to get rich doing this, but with my insights into K12 needs I hope I can write effective apps for that market."

Comments

iOS first, better for your background

[SuperKendall]

First of all, given a C base you'll probably be a little more comfortable with Objective-C, because you can fall back on C when you need to. The language itself is a superset and the superset is a really different mindset than C itself is, but it's a very nice OO language with some great features.

But also, currently iOS has a ton of awesome educational material. Apple itself provides a lot of documentation, and if you pay the $99/year fee to develop for devices (you should) then you also get all of the videos from the past developer conference, plus of course there's the free iTunesU videos from Stanford on iPhone development.

There are also a ton of third party books and at this point probably local Cocoaheads groups you could attend meeting with questions.

I think for some time to come Apple is going to be the leader in the space of mobile development, but especially around education - there are a lot of kids applications on the iPhone and Pad and a ton of parents are buying these devices in part so that kids can use them. I have been astounded at how fast this has happened, especially with the iPad.

Re:Personally, Android

[wembley fraggle]

There is a great iPhone application programming course on iTunesU, which includes an introduction to ObjC and rapidly moves into powerful programming techniques for iOS. Better yet, it uses a lot of the examples from the SDK as the course material (there's no book), and the slides are provided as part of the program. It's all free to boot. Definitely worth watching for a good introduction to the platform. Plus, it's all free.

It's the Stanford University CS 193P, iPhone Application Programming, Spring 2010 course that I watched.

Re:Yes

[object404]

Learn Flash/Actionscript3/Adobe AIR. It will simply run everywhere. (cue Flash vs HTML5 flame war. off-topic, IE9 ain't coming to XP so screw that -- I'm sick of all the "this will only work on Safari" or "this will only work on Chrome" HTML5 demos. As someone who actually builds stuff for clients instead of just blogging about these technologies, this is a dealbreaker and ***FORWARD*** compatibility headache as Windows XP will never go away for the near future. The original reason I learned Flash coding was because of the bloody headache of cross-browser compatibility.)

Back on topic, Flash is coming to every single smartphone platform (and even TV set top boxes). 19 of the top 20 mobile manufacturers are already part of the consortium Adobe Open Screen Project and they're working to get Flash running on their respected platforms. Only Steve Jobs didn't sign up for whatever his reasons. Flash is now out on Android, Symbian, Maemo, coming to WinMo 7 (Flash Lite is already out on older versions of WinMo), Blackberry & Palm, definitely on Meego (Nokia Maemo + Intel Moblin).

Flash CS5 can now be used to make native iPhone apps legally again as per App Store policies (the process is the same as making an Adobe AIR app). Here's a refresher on exporting your AIR project into iOS: Packager for iPhone Refresher.

There's some surprising current statistics to fix one's perspective on the death of Flash by the iOS gadget crowd. Currently 97% of the internet is Flash capable and iOS only has 1.1% share. Of course, the iOS share will increase as more customers buy them, but think of that when building stuff with the widest reach possible. Also, currently, devs seem to be monetizing the most on iOS, but the App store is now *so* *so* *so* saturated that it's hard for a new app to get noticed amidst all the noise.

Flash 10.1 is already out on Android Froyo (2.2) and AIR for Android is currently in public beta and should come out soon http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android/ so Flash is already good to go if you want to target Android.

Another thing to consider is that Android market share has now overtaken iOS and since there's not enough decent content on the Android and Adobe AIR marketplaces compared to the Apple App Store, if you build a good app on any of those platforms, it's easier to pull in a user base since there isn't much competition yet.

Your Flash apps would run on Symbian^3 devices which are already out (N8, C3, etc) as they have all Flash Lite 4.0 (A slightly stripped down version of Flash 10 which already runs AVM2 AS3 swfs). In fact, Nokia just launched the $10million Calling All Innovators N8 app contest and Flash is one of the formats you can enter in.

Not only will your apps run on mobile devices if you build 'em in AIR, they will also run on Desktop Linux, Mac & Windows and that is the biggest plus for me. For complaints about the cost of Adobe tools, you can build SWFs and AIR apps from completely Open Source tools. The Flex SDK is FOSS and you can build apps just with your .AS3 sourcecode + a command line just like with the JDK for Java (or pick any appropriate IDE of your choice to make your life easier). Oh, btw, the commercial Flash Builder is free for students & teachers + developers who're hit by the economic crisis and are currently unemployed -> apply here for license.

Of course, please don't forget to *optimize* *optimize* *optimize*. Flash is not a slow platform. T

Re:Yes

[bm_luethke]

"Android has a hidden danger - malware has already been found in the wild that attack Android phones."

So does the iPhone - there have even been a few that have made it to the front pages of Slashdot. One of the Apple "hidden dangers", as you call them, is some strange confidence that Apple doesn't have these bugs and people act accordingly. Indeed their PDF reader had a remote root exploit that makes any and all Android exploits pale in comparison. Heck, even *the store itself* has been compromised on at least one occasion (most likely by multiple different people too) and a large number of unauthorized purchases initiated by said intruders.

However, that really doesn't matter that much with respect to what environment to learn and frankly matters little to most people (note how many use Windows). If you want to develop mobile application then it would be suggested that you learn iOS, Android, and RIM.

Re:Yes

[gbjbaanb]

a fair point, Air is a common-baseline platform to develop for, more ubiquitous than Windows! Develop for Air and you'll be ok no matter where you want to put your apps.

There is an alternative: Qt.

It's a more 'serious' development platform requiring C++ skills (that pretty much get compiled to any platform) with a rather easy to use GUI, and now they also have a wonderful QML 'fluid' capabilities where you can extend the 'boring' old GUI with new fancy features very easily.
It has support on Android (through the Lighthouse project) and all traditional desktops, and all Nokias (of course) with iPhone support being worked on at the moment.

Its also free for everybody. If you want to develop for multiple platforms without the 'embarrassment' of using Flash, then this could be a way to go.