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."

Re:Android

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in a similar situation as the submitter. Despite what everyone is reporting I think both will
survive and flourish. I really dislike both companies but even I can see that what they're both
doing will be big and so to be honest neither is a bad choice.

What kind of apps are you trying to create and will they get used more on the ios or android platform?
They actually seem to appeal to fairly different markets that just happen to overlap in some places.

I ended up choosing android because the IDE wasn't tailored to one platform, the native language seems
more useful with android and I think that ultimately android will be the more successful of the two.

In terms of money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked (this was a good 3+ months ago), to develop applications for the iphone (this was pre-ipad) you had to own a mac in some form to use their sdk and other dev stuff. This was to my knowledge the only way possible to write iphone applications at the time. You could use the hackintosh method but this still in essence was a mac. On the other hand, Android applications can use any hardware and they give you the option of using the SDK inside Eclipse (an ide if you didnt know).

I've made a couple of Android applications but I'm not going to shell out for a mac just to write for the iphone.

I wouldn't invest in iOS development

[Rix]

Apple is making exactly the same mistakes they made in the early desktop market: they're refusing to license their software to more nimble hardware manufacturers, so they'll get passed over.

Re:Go Android

[Tubal-Cain]

This software can be virtualized on most modern PC configurations.

IIRC, he may be breaking the EULA if he does that.

Re:Write Portable Code

[turgid]

If those platforms lock you into languages and development environments that tightly, I'd be ignoring them completely and looking for something else to develop on.

Seriously, is that what the world's coming to? Is it the 1980s all over again?

Re:Yes

[dr-alves]

As a developer:
- Android is way easier than iOS.
- ActionScript is the place when good language design went to die

As a user
- iOS apps, if designed natively, are extremely hard to beat in terms of responsiveness, beauty and general "native feeling"

As a vendor
- Flash is the common denominator, i.e., it may commoditize the platform, but I've yet to see a flash based app that looks as good as the best native apps
- Android will have a bigger user base but a worse monetization mechanism than iOS, i.e., more users but which consume less (more due to the neglect of the market than otherwise).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Yes.

[Radtoo]

There actually are more viable language choices. Android can not just support Java, but JVM languages - which is an important distinction. Want something like Lisp? try Clojure. Want something like Haskell or Java? Try Scala. Also, it supports C/C++. There is also fairly good support for scripting languages (Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript, Tcl, and shell) at the moment, though the scripting languages cannot currently do everything and run more slowly. Even more languages are supported through experimental implementations...

Apple so far has ObjC, C, Cpp and intends to allow more, like Squeak.

Even apart from this, programmer freedom & choice is more on Android's side - not just because of the programming languages, but also because the OS is free & open source - which even leaves you the choice of not using Google's store or create a tailored version of it all, right down to the OS. No such luck on Apple's side. They intend to press you into their App Store monopoly, and I'd say that might be enough of a reason to not pick IOS up at all, despite the larger user base. Besides, Android has nicer phone hardware (especially the high-end HTC ones)... which should also matter a little to an enthusiast user / developer.

Re:Yes

[glebovitz]

Actually, this isn't so far fetched, except you should be saying: "write Nokia Qt, Qt Mobilitiy, and QtQuick" because it runs on Symbian, Meego, and Maemo. With 160 million devices in the market capable of Qt and QtQuick, it wouldn't been a bad plan to learn it. It will also run on tablets and desktops.

Re:Yes

[SanityInAnarchy]

Which of your bits of anti-HTML5 FUD prevents you from simply offering Chrome Frame to IE users?

I'd also be curious which demos you've seen which only work on Safari, or only work on Chrome. It seems like they "only" work anywhere except IE, and some even work with newer versions of IE.

And yes, if you build your apps for AIR, they'll run on modern desktop OSes -- if people install it. Which would make them morons, because if it's really something for which HTML would be a viable alternative, why would I want to install your app instead of bookmarking it? Is it that hard to see that one of these options is both more convenient and secure?

If you run them in a plugin, that means you are part of the problem -- you are part of a phenomenon which holds the Web back.