Cross-platform mobile development with Visual C

Transcription

1 Cross-platform mobile development with Visual C Sasha CTO, Sela Group blog.sashag.net

2 App Targeting Spectrum Developer pain exponential jump in complexity, but not in user experience Hosted web app (Cordova et al.) App for each platform Shared native code (Xamarin/C++) Adaptive mobile website Redirect to m.example.com User experience

3 The JavaScript Struggle Second-class platform support (need plugins) Subpar performance Subpar development tools (debugging, profiling) Subpar 3 rd party library support (need plugins) Are we ready to sacrifice all of the above for code sharing? there must be a better way

4 The GC Effect, Part 1 We feel so strongly about ARC being the right approach to memory management that we have decided to deprecate Garbage Collection in OSX. Apple, WWDC, 2012 Hmm. Apple, what do they know about GC, right?

5 The GC Effect, Part 2 [ ] when garbage collection has five times as much memory as required, its runtime performance matches or slightly exceeds that of explicit memory management. However, [ ] performance degrades substantially when it must use smaller heaps. With three times as much memory, it runs 17% slower on average, and with twice as much memory, it runs 70% slower. Garbage collection also is more susceptible to paging when physical memory is scarce. Quantifying the performance of garbage collection vs. explicit memory management, Hertz & Berger

6 Trivia (/by Ankit Ashtana) Is the Android Facebook app using C++? How about Spotify? Twitter? Angry Birds? How many of the top 50 apps on Google Play (US) leverage C++ code?

7 Silos Swift/Objective-C Xcode Mac Cocoa Touch Objective-C runtime Darwin Java Android Studio Mac/Linux/Windows Android Framework Dalvik Linux kernel C#/C++/JavaScript Visual Studio Windows UWP Windows Runtime NT kernel

8 Shared C++ Core Swift/Objective-C Xcode Mac Java Android Studio Mac/Linux/Windows shared C++ core C#/C++/JavaScript Visual Studio Windows.a.a or.so.lib or.dll Cocoa Touch Objective-C runtime Darwin Android Framework Dalvik Linux kernel UWP Windows Runtime NT kernel

9 Not Your Father s C++ Modern C++ is safer, more productive, and more maintainable There s a library for everything, and many of them are cross-platform (std, boost, cpprest, soci, ) auto http = http_client{ " }; auto resp = await http.request(methods::get); auto body = await resp.extract_json(); auto name = body.at("name").as_string(); session db(sqlite3, "mydb.sqlite"); db << "insert into table ", use(name);

10 Visual C++ Support Obj-C and C++ VC++ Windows* clang ios Simulator Java and C++ VC++ Windows clang VS Android Emulator C# and C++ VC++ Windows C2 VS Emulator *Mac build agent required

11 App Architecture UIView UIViewController Swift > Obj-C bridge View Activity JNI bridge Control Page P/Invoke or C++/CX shared C++ core

12 App Structure in Visual Studio ios packaging project ios static library project Android app project Android library project shared project C++ core

13 Visual Studio Android Emulator Hyper-V based x86/x64 emulator with first-class performance, accelerometer support, multitouch emulation, and more

14 Demo Hello World apps for Android and ios in Visual Studio

15 Demo Shared C++ core

16 Demo OpenGL ES template

17 Limitations and Future Directions No code completion, IntelliSense, syntax highlighting for Java and Objective-C (yet) No Swift support for ios No built-in UI designer (Xamarin Business) Partial debugging and profiling support It s Beta-quality, really but a very promising start

18 Summary You don t have to compromise on performance, productivity, and code sharing, or sell your soul to a garbage collector Visual C++ brings together the worlds of ios, Android, and Windows app development Free with Visual Studio 2015 Community edition

19 Thank you! Sasha CTO, Sela Group blog.sashag.net