Google j2objc, a Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool and runtime

Re:Google j2objc, a Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool... by MarkMc on Friday October 24, 2014 @08:50AM (#8503379)

I think you're underestimating the amount of platform-independent code in a typical app.

Looking though a random sample of non-game apps on my iPad, I'd guess that about half would have a significant chunk of code which is not OS-specific, including: Gmail, Spotify, Anki, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, Penultimate.

I also don't think that the choice between C and Java as the common language is so clear cut. C would get you some speed benefit but Java has GWT for porting Java to Javascript, and and a huge range of other tools and libraries. In the end I think it would come down to how comfortable your development team was in each language.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Java developer)

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Re:Google j2objc, a Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool... by RussianCow on Friday October 24, 2014 @11:01AM (#8503999)

> C would get you some speed benefit but Java has GWT for porting Java to Javascript

You can compile C to JavaScript with emscripten[0].

[0]: https://github.com/kripken/emscripten

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Re:Google j2objc, a Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool... by cromwellian on Friday October 24, 2014 @11:45AM (#8504202)

Emscripten's good for games, but I don't think it's good for an app like Inbox.

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