Titanium Appcelerator for real developer

Why a native coder should use Titanium?

Semi-serious guide

WHO am i?

I'm Paolo Mosca

Freelance Developer

Prototype - Startup Supporter

Titanium Lover

also Tango Dancer, Amateur Photographer...

....Strong Traveler, Workaholic...

Life addicted

twitter: @tangotrotter

me: about.me/paolo.mosca

Who are you?

Business shark

Native coder

experienced programmer

Mobile solutions expert

Marketer

Just Curious

Lost Tourist

I'm here for the BEER

Who you are NOT?

Code Purist

I can write a NASA launching rocket

algorithm in a single line...

...i will forget how to read that again in 5 minutes

...but I don't need that...

I never write wrong code

Flash Programmer / Graphic Designer

I got fired

I cannot find job

I made a great website buying a great template for Wordpress

I know Dreamweaver

I know FrontPage (really?!?)

I will start to develop awesome apps

... please don't... or try AdobeAir

.NET Developer

I worked for a long time in a big company

I'm tired to work for corporate projects,

proprietary CMS, CRM, SAP...

I really know C#

I love Microsoft

I want to step in the smart world of app dev

try Xamarin

PhoneGAP Lover

I'm here for my Religion War

to tell you you're wrong

I will refute all your theories about Hybrid

and Cross Platform development

Cross Platform Promise

Write Once

Works Everywhere

Average revenue for single platform app (~500$/month)

Average revenue for multiple platform app (~1500$/month)

[...source: Developer Economics 2013...]

THIS IS SPARTA!

SOMETIMES DEVELOPERS FORGET THAT WE ARE HERE TO NOT JUST BUILD GREAT STUFF, BUT ALSO TO MAKE MONEY.

WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER.

Starting with Titanium

I was old school native coder.

I must admit, this was my face when i started with Titanium

why?

I will lose control

I cannot optimize my code

I will not be able to use the last smartest paradigm I've learned in the course "best practices for awesome developer"

I will lose in performances for my great app

a near-real case

the customer: Can you develop a very simple app (no more than an hello world application)?

me: Sure! Let's do it

day 1: design the best architecture I can think, respect all the paradigm of MVC decoupling even my brain from my head

day 2: hard coding

day 3: (the customer) can you add a button to make a coffee? can you move this label to give a better experience of happiness to the end user? can you blablabla

Pure spaghetti code

45 days later...

COst ANalysis

To build a Multi Platform app going Native

iOS Development = €€€

Android Development = €€€

Development cost = €€€ + €€€

Maintain 2 different codes (often 2 teams)

To build a Cross Platform app with Titanium

Js/Titan Development = €€€

(usually less expensive than native and easier to find)

Development cost = LESS

Let's start to take it seriously

what I need to start with Titanium?

It's better if you are a native coder
knowledge about OOP paradigms
strong JS skills (no... jquery is not enough)
you really know what is (not how-to) mobile development

Titanium Platform

Development IDE (Titanium Studio)

CLI (Command line interface)

API System based on native UI control

JS to native build -> node.js

Simulator / Emulator / Devices Integration

Marketplaces Deployment

Cloud Solution (ACS)

Free & OpenSource

Pros

Pros:

development faster than native (~70%) even on single platform

one SDK for multiple platform

javascript (Write Once, ADAPT Everywhere)

performances close to native (~85-90%)

very good documentation (since 6 months, before was horrible)

great community

more than 500k developers in the world

Cons

Fake Cons:

Memory leaks (usually caused by js bad programming)

Cons:

Bigger app (not so much)

Native controls not 100% provided

Debugging (Android debugging really sucks)

Update delay on native SDK new features released

No visual UI

Code sample

var win = Ti.UI.createWindow({
	backgroundColor:'#fff'
});
var button = Ti.UI.createButton({
 	right:20,
	left:20,
	title:'Hi there'
});
win.add(button);
win.open();
button.addEventListener('click', function(e){
	alert('click!');
});

let's run our code

iphone

tizen

android

Alloy MVC

Model: Backbone

Views:

<Alloy>
   <Window id="win">
       <Button id="button" class="cool" onClick="clickMe" platform="ios,android"/>
   </Window>
</Alloy>

Style View:

"#win":{
   backgroundColor:'#fff'
},
"#button":{
   right:20,
   left:20,
   title:'Hi there'
},".cool":{   backgroundColor: '#999'}

Controller:

win.open();
function clickME(){
   alert('click!');
};

Titanium Today

iOS/Android/Tizen/BB10/MobileWeb(html5 export)
UI controls
Database Managements
Push Notifications
Social Network support
Native Modules integration
Alloy MVC
ACS support

Near Future: Ti.next

WP8 Support
Including Native Code
Compilation in ASM (faster than native!!)
Smaller build

Slides: https://slid.es/pablotango/titanium-presentation

paolo@idev.io

@tangotrotter