So I’ve been using Appcelerator’s mobile development framework, Titanium, lately, and overall the experience has been good.
The benefits of being able to make use of my Javascript knowledge to build a multi platform mobile app that runs natively are huge.
There are a few problems with it though when you’re coming from Ruby.
- getting a testing framework to work with it is a pain.
- a small community of developers using it, so often when you hit a problem, there’s nowhere else to turn, you’re either the only one with this problem or no-one else has found a solution. Either way, you’ve just got to figure it out yourself.
- Ugly code. Let’s face it, Javascript doesn’t look good.
- Where’s the MVC? The example app provided by Appcelerator is a masterclass in how to avoid separating concerns and jam everything into 1 file. Unfortunately, it’s a pattern that I often come across in Javascript.
This is where coffeescript comes in. Suddenly javascript starts looking good and you feel better about using it. Combine this with a sensible folder structure and separate your code into a more MVC-y way of doing things and Titanium looks like a contender for doing some serious app building.
