Change of Tack

The only programming I have ever know has been programming for the web. Chiefly PHP and JavaScript (with a little RoR sprinkled in there along the way), but all loosely-typed languages where it is easy to be a bit sloppy with the code and still get away with it.

In contrast, I have just started learning a bit about iPhone app development. Primarily because I want another challenge, something a little different; and partly because I am really excited about the potential that the platform holds, and I would rather be in there making things happen then watching from the sidelines. So I have started getting stuck into a bit of Objective-C, and to be honest it is something of a shock! Coming from a PHP/JavaScript background, the language seems incredibly rigid – no more getting away with being sloppy about return value types! Actually, to start with the whole thing seemed incredibly anal, but I am slowly starting to see the advantages of doing things this way.

In fact, even though I have only just started looking at it, I am starting to understand how PHP is really a kind of facilitation layer plastered over the underlying core programming language – which makes things easier for sure, but lacks the fundamental power that scripting in C can give you. Of course PHP is really optimised for web tasks, and Objective-C in turn for mobile and desktop applications, so their intention is very different and they undoubtably each fulfill their roles very satisfactorily. But I can’t help the feeling that I have suddenly had a veil lifted from my eyes and can now see that I have been programming in Fisher-Price, child-friendly languages up until now.

I mean this as no disrespect to the people who code in PHP/JavaScript etc – I do so everyday and very much enjoy it. It’s just that within those languages you are very much shielded from a lot of the more ’serious’, lower-level programming issues (such as memory management and threading) that you have to deal with in languages such as Objective-C. This is a fact that I was aware of but never really understood until I started investigating iPhone development.

So I am realising how much I have to learn, all over again, but I am really quite excited about it all. Who knows where it will lead – 5 years ago I was doing a Master’s degree in Oceanography and would never have though I would be programming for the web in 5 years time! I certainly wouldn’t be sad if I was earning a living writing Mac/iPhone applications in a few years time. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself…

No Comments »

This app should be free

Like pretty much every iPhone 2.0 user, I have spent a bit of time recently browsing through the app store. Whilst I’m not entirely comfortable with some aspects of it’s distribution model, overall I’ve got to say it’s a pretty sweet way to find and download applications.

If I’m unsure about an app, I’ll check out the reviews. Any commenting system like this always has a small proportion of idiots on there, but for the most part I’ve found the reviews helpful (although generally the total star rating is less useful than the individual comments). However there is one type of comment that really annoys me, and I have seen it a countless number of times in the reviews of some of the simpler, cheaper applications on the app store:

“This app should be free.”

Excuse me? Should be free? Why is that exactly?

Any developer who puts their time into building an application, for whatever platform, is entitled to seek some renumeration for that effort. If they price their application too high, they won’t sell much. If they price it too low they may not make the profit they desire. But that is for the market to decide, and their success at the price they choose will essentially be dictated by the relative quality and usefulness of their application. No-one should feel guilty for charging the price of a can of coke for an app, even an incredibly simple one. They have to pay to get accepted into the developer program and their programs listed on the app store, remember.

It is absolutely NOT the place of someone who has never written a line of code in their life to criticize a developer for charging a small fee for their application. Even a simple one takes time to code, test, submit to the app store and maintain. But some people just don’t get this.

Why is this type of comment so prevalent on the app store but completely absent from online shops like Amazon? Because there has been a precedent set on the app store whereby some applications, even fairly complex ones, have been distributed for free. But the fact that one developer has decided to give the fruits of his labours away should have no bearing on another developer’s pricing. In fact often the free apps are a way of selling the other ‘paid’ applications that the developer offers for the desktop platform, so they may even increase the developers revenue in the long run.

So no, this application should not be free. If you think otherwise then maybe you should think about how much your time is worth, and when you last gave some of that time to producing something to give away to others. Not recently, I’ll wager.

No Comments »