Appcelerator Titanium might've made it to my toolbox

Last time I played around with Appcelerator Titanium I didn't get a chance to really put it through its paces. Mostly because I wasn't getting anywhere ... I remember spending hours, even days, just figuring out how to get a Hello World to run in a simulator.

MoBods Scoop! Development ;-)

Yesterday was my lucky day! Not only did I get something to run, I actually made something useful. Or rather, I was given a working app and told to add some features and generally make it better a tiny little bit.

Took me way too long - expected when dealing with technology you know nothing about - but at 6am today I had Pickup connecting to the server on the user's own private channel and talking nicely to the Chrome extension.

By the way this isn't my project, I just helped out, but from what I saw last night, you want to sign up for the beta. Promise!

Titanium good

  1. It's Javascript, if you haven't noticed I love javascript
  2. The same app works both on android and iOS
  3. Titanium API's are generally simpler than what I've seen of native iOS
  4. Properly using the user interface API's gives you a native look&feel

Titanium bad

  1. The IDE; I don't like being forced to use an IDE and I very much hate being forced to use a crappy IDE.
  2. Everything looks like it would be pretty much impossible to develop with my usual text editor method
  3. Code once, run everywhere is good in principle, but it usually ends up lacking the polish of a real native app, especially since android and iOS have slightly different UI guidelines and traditions

Conclusion

All in all, there's a lot of potential in this Titanium stuff despite the shortcomings. I might just start adding a mobile part to my future projects ... there's certainly some that could use it.