iPhone Development: Random Thoughts

iPhone Development: Random Thoughts
I've been working on the iPhone for month or so....maybe a bit longer. I was interested in doing some iPhone dev ever since I got mine. I love the device (much more than WinMo, sorry) and wanted to create my own apps for it. I was also asked to work with Carbonated Comics (www.carbonatedcomics.com) on an iPhone version of their software, so I joined the team. Great bunch of folks and I really like their product.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some random thoughts on the whole iPhone dev experience with more to come.
As an aside, I've noticed that now that I twitter (TheoMoore) I don't blog anywhere near as much as I used to do. Not sure why. Not like I can effectively blog via twitter. Heck, most of tweets don't even talk about the same things about which I blog....
On to the thoughts:
- iPhone is a fantastic platform for apps. Love the interface. It is the purest of form meeting function in a device interface I've ever seen. Also, there's no stylus...no words for the hatred I have for WinMo stylus.
- iPhone only single-threads. No multi-threaded apps here. Simlipfies things, but sure does also limit things too.
- iPhone is a pretty pure MVC device. Like that. I don't think I ever really understood this paradigm as well as I do now, thanks to the iPhone and XCode/IB.
- iPhone 3G has only 128MB of memory. Ye gods, that's teeny!
- Memory management is the toughest part of iPhone dev to get under your belt, IMO. Since memory is so limited, even a couple memory leaks can severely affect performance. No garbage collection on iPhone as yet.
- ObjC is a pain the arse. Always. Everytime. Some folks love it, and some folks like to be whipped and spanked.
- I keep being told I'll get used to Obj-C "peculiarities". Yeah? I could get used to getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick too, but I don't think it's likely.
- XCode feels...thin compared to VS
- XCode, Interface Builder, and the iPhone Simulator are very loosely (if at all coupled). While this seems good (and I guess it is), it tends to annoy me when one of them doesn't realize I made changes in the other and I have to close the app down to make it "see". This happens often enough it's worth putting on this post.
-XCode error messages are the most vague I've ever seen. I keep expecting one in Klingon or one that says "So I clearly cannot choose the wine in front of me".
- Getting used to the hotkeys in XCode has been challenging, for some reason.
Anyway, more on this as I work on it.
Wish me luck!
Posted on Saturday, October 17, 2009 6:04 PM | Back to top