Being that my background is primarily with embedded software (namely, C and C++ w/o the .NET framework), I have not had much experience with online libraries. They seem awesome in theory, but for my application I struggled to see a need for them. And therefore, I was shocked at how much work people put into said libraries.
This was all true…until recently. My 3 years of working on embedded projects here at SEP has ended, and now I have started helping with some of the early stages of a mobile app.
My domain is definitely NOT mobile, but I would say that it isn’t that drastic of a change. And if my knowledge of software was in a Venn diagram format, I don’t think object oriented programming would be in the center.
So, in order to be as helpful as possible on this new project…I decided to educate myself on the mobile platforms that we will be using – Android, Symbian, and of course…iPhone.
There’s a lot of information out there. Most of the time, I find myself going to multiple sites for that information, though. One thing that has really impressed me so far is the work that all three of these platforms have done, in the way of documentation.
The Android library seems to be the most fluid, and easy to navigate. All of the native packages and classes are easy to get to, and easy to read. They even include examples of how each can be used. Way cool, IMO!
The Symbian library seems to have a TON of information…literally. It’s so much information, I find it difficult to find what it is I’m looking for. Some of that might come with my lack of knowledge about the platform, though. Under 1 site, we have documentation for the OS, APIs, hardware (and different versions), etc. It’s quite the mother-load of information.
The iPhone library seems to be broken up into a completely different format. Different being the key word. Android chose to break it up by package and/or class. iPhone seems to have a different method. I’m sure I’ll like it better once I get neck deep into developing an app for the iPhone…but for now, I find it difficult.
To me, it is amazing how much time each company has invested into these libraries. That’s not something that they are going to directly see any benefits from. Immediately, you can tell that they are trying to make the developers happy!
