If you’re writing a 3D game then C++ with platform-specific low-level wrappers is clearly the right way to go. C++ is portable, and OpenGL ES is portable, and you probably don’t need a huge amount of platform-specific code that has to be rewritten on each platform.
I have a non-game app which I decided to write using C++ and OpenGL for (a) portability, and (b) because objective C was a hideous trainwreck of a language, and (c) because I was fed up with all the bugs in Apple’s APIs. That decision was almost 10 years ago; things have changed a bit - would I make the same decision now? OpenGL is deprecated on iOS, replaced by the proprietary “Metal”. Obj C is replaced by the less revolting but still proprietary “Swift”. I’m still maintaining a lot of user interface written in a style that I like but is very “NIH”.
I sympathise with the Dropbox people. It’s unfortunate that we have such a disjointed environment for developing mobile apps. (At least the web is now more uniform than it used to be.). Is there a good solution?
For me the irony is that having built all the “portable” code, I never built an Android version, for business reasons....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
