"The software development kit for Google's Linux-based Android mobile phone operating system has been out in the wild for a over a month now, plenty of time for developers to form opinions of the platform and assess the capabilities of the API. The verdict from seasoned mobile software programmers is somewhat mixed; some are even expressing serious frustration."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-01-01
That is wrong on so many levels. You obviously haven't had Visual Studio decide it can't talk to a device you are attempting to debug on? The emulator is not particularly good, the native ARM emulator is absolutely dog slow. Unless you use Win32 API (why would you do that and forgo RAD?), you'll end up using DotNet. The Compact Framework just does not work well in all aspects. Grids never seem to repaint properly for example (this was a Dell Axim x51 with Mobile 5 on it and various PPC2003 devices, such as older Axims, Toshibas and O2 XDA, which are rebranded HTC/Q-Tek IIRC.) I also found that I was continually hitting brick walls where Microsoft had not implemented something simple and fundamental in the CF that one would take for granted in the Desktop API (recolouring individual cells in a grid control comes to mind, though it's been a while and I can't remember specifics.) Sql Server CE was buggy as hell (memory leaks all over the place, so much so that it would use up all free memory and cause the OS to crash) and then the 2005 version COMPLETELY CHANGED THE API!!!
The ease of development and prototyping can't be beaten, but after you skim the surface, the underlying code and effort is no more or less than any other OO GUI event driven API.
Member since:2006-03-23
Member since:2005-07-07
the simplest mobile os to develop for in win CE hands down. i mean you can do it from visual studio, and microsoft did visual studio right, it is a realy nice development environment
The article mentions how easy it is to set up and develop for Android with Eclipse. I wonder if it really is any easier to develop for WinCE with VS. I haven't tried either but a comparison of the two would be nice.
Member since:
2005-07-13
the simplest mobile os to develop for in win CE hands down. i mean you can do it from visual studio, and microsoft did visual studio right, it is a realy nice development environment