OSCON 2012 notes

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:59:32 +0200
"Paulo Pinto" <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote:

> >"Nick Sabalausky"  wrote in message
> >news:20120723010439.00006efc at unknown... I wouldn't know. I haven't
> >actually dealt with the android SDK directly, only Marm. When I saw
> >google saying you use either Java or straight natively-compiled C++,
> >I guess I assumed that meant an actual C++ API.
> 
> No, actually you are still dealing with JNI. Google's position on
> native code, is that
> you should use it just for code hotspots, gamming or to port "legacy"
> code.
> 
> [quote]In general, you should only use the NDK if it is essential to
> your app—
> never because you simply prefer to program in C/C++.[/quote]
> 
> http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html
> 
> The native activity is actually a Java Activity with a specific set
> of methods defined
> as native methods.
> 
> http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NativeActivity.html
> 
> You are only allowed to access these libraries:
> 
> - libc (C library) headers
> - libm (math library) headers
> - JNI interface headers
> - libz (Zlib compression) headers
> - liblog (Android logging) header
> - OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 (3D graphics libraries) headers
> - libjnigraphics (Pixel buffer access) header (for Android 2.2 and
> above).
> - A Minimal set of headers for C++ support
> - OpenSL ES native audio libraries
> - Android native application APIS
> 
> The Android native applications APIs are C wrappers around JNI calls, 
> meaning you get a performance
> hit when calling them due to marshling. This is described in the 
> STABLE-APIS.html document delivered
> as part of the NDK.
> 
> [quote]Starting from API level 9, it is possible to entirely write an 
> Android
> application with native code (i.e. without any Java). That does not
> mean that your code does not run inside a VM though, and most of the
> features of the platform will still need to be accessed through
> JNI.[/quote]
> 
> Java is the main language to develop standard applications on
> Android, everything else are just
> workarounds, even if we don't like it.
> 
> Another example are the new low level Codec APIs in Jelly Bean, which
> are only  exposed directly via JNI to
> Java.
> 
> http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaCodec.html
> 

Gah! What the fuck is this, 1998?!? (Why can't we finally just let Java
die as the wretched idea it always was?)

I've always seen Android as a slightly-less-shitty clone of iOS. But
every time I turn around, I discover another way Google seems hell-bent
on proving me wrong. They ape most of Apple's bad ideas and then
toss in some of their own.

How the hell is it even *possible* for another company to compete this
well with Apple on retarded design decisions?

I suppose with the death of Jobs it was inevitable for another company
to successfully surpass Apple's horridness, but I always figured it
would be from Apple getting slightly less crappy or fading back into
their 90's obscurity where they belong - not from others sinking down to
sub-Jobsian idiocy. I'd never even considered that a possibility. Very
depressing. I miss Woz's computers. Fuck, I even miss the days when
Microsoft ruled the world with an iron fist. At least back then
platforms were open and software/hardware designs were relatively sane
from a user's standpoint (even if the code behind them wasn't).