{"id":892,"date":"2012-06-07T10:36:08","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T22:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=892"},"modified":"2012-06-07T10:36:08","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T22:36:08","slug":"poll-firemonkey-or-platform-native","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/892\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll: FireMonkey or “Platform Native” ?"},"content":{"rendered":"[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span>

We have had almost a year of monkeying with fire now – enough time I think for people to have formed a view as to whether it is truly a viable multi-platform framework for the future, or just a convenient cross-platform solution with limited, genuine utility.<\/p>\n

At the same time, we have had OS X and some iOS support for the same period, with the prospect of more platforms being made available to us Delphi developers in the future.<\/p>\n

So, looking ahead, do we see FireMonkey as providing a solid foundation for a cross-platform future, or would we prefer to see tighter, closer “native” support for MULTIPLE-platforms (both currently supported and envisaged\/promised) ?<\/p>\n

I know what I think:<\/p>\n

As much as I’d prefer to use ObjectPascal, I quickly decided that using Delphi + FireMonkey for OS X \/ iOS was like trying to ice-skate uphill. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the disconnect between me, my code and the environment I was writing for was going to be a source of nothing but constant pain and frustration, and so decided to learn Objective-C and Xcode instead.<\/p>\n

I anticipate this will be only worse when it comes to Android, so that will mean also tackling Eclipse and Java – a far less enticing prospect for sure.<\/p>\n

Which led me to wonder, am I the only one that finds FireMonkey so disappointing ?<\/p>\n

So I decided to run a poll to (unscientifically) gauge the feelings of the community in this regard.<\/p>\n

The (very) early numbers are quite interesting, suggesting that people see some utility in FireMonkey but also a keen interest in (as I read it, tipping ever so slightly “in favour of”) native platform support at least as an alternative.<\/p>\n

That makes sense to me.<\/p>\n

Even though I do not currently have a use for it, I can see the potential of FireMonkey as a conveniently cross-platform graphics\/visualisation sub-system for use within “platform native” applications. I just wouldn’t want to build my entire app that way.<\/p>\n

What do you<\/em> want ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span>We have had almost a year of monkeying with fire now – enough time I think for people to have formed a view as to whether it is truly a viable multi-platform framework for the future, or just a convenient cross-platform solution with limited, genuine utility. At the same time, we have had OS X […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[153,94,135,150,151,152],"class_list":["post-892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-delphi","tag-android","tag-cross-platform","tag-firemonkey","tag-multi-platform","tag-objective-c","tag-xcode"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TKYv-eo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":893,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}