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The Schizophrenic State of Software In 2014

Posted by Soulskill on from the forgot-to-take-its-meds dept.

jfruh writes: "The current state of the world of software is going in two radically different directions. On the one hand, server-side software is maturing, with wide consensus on tools and techniques that can be used across platforms. On the other hand, client-side programming is an increasingly fragmented mess, with the need to build apps for the Web and for multiple PC and mobile platforms, all natively. But of course, the server and client sides have to work together to deliver what people actually want."

1 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Adobe Air by gaspyy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I fail to see how AIR is a problem worse than Phonegap or what Chrome is offering right now as a wrapper over html5.

    Making a cross-platform game is world of pain, especially when you're small.

    I was able to make my chess game available on web, as a chrome app, as a native app for PC, Mac and Linux and for mobile on iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and phones, even the now-dying Blackberry Playbook. The game is quite complex but 99% of the code is cross-platform, there are very few platform-specific lines.

    I've been considering porting it to HTML5 but the amount of work needed is too much for one man. The AI is straighforward (Javascript and AS3 are closely related), but porting the UI, the multiplayer code and then tweaking it to make sure it works with all major browsers is not something I'm looking forward to. With AIR I can keep my sanity and concentrate on features.