Plus, the amount of things in our world that will be controlled and performed by software is only going to grow.
While more exposure to technology and better education will create more programmers, I think the demand for programmers will always outstrip the supply.
I hate that you can't use the iPad mini as a cell phone. It's small enough now that in a lot of situations you can carry it around with you. And in those cases, it would be nice to only have to carry your iPad mini and leave your phone at home.
Sure, with the 3g model you can still use iMessage, Whats App, Skype, etc- but you're missing out on regular voice calls and SMS.
From an engineering perspective- is it that difficult to add a sim card slot and the extra cell antennas?
Why don't you guys put some stuff up on your website? Every section is just empty. As an indie game developer using Unity3d (and funnily enough an ex-Zynga employee too) I wouldn't even bother contacting your studio when every section of your site is just empty.
Knowing what you do now, with the memories of the terrible bugs you had to work through due to Chrome / OSX, would you still choose HTML5 over other cross-platform game engines like Unity?
If javascript could run outside of the browser, I'd use it for everything.
Javascript was nothing but pure bliss to work with, but the browsers were hell. Overall I know I'm definitely going to keep making short, simple games with javascript because it's a wonderful tool for the job. Long-term projects are a bit risky due to browser issues, so this'll probably be my last huge game with the language (sadly). If you're planning on doing a 2D game, javascript is a great language. Flash would still be "best" at this point in time due to all the support and speed at which you can create something, but, in a way, the problem solving and brain wracking is what makes development fun.
Unity's something I've been looking into for a while now, so it's a possibility for future projects.
The OS X issues have been screwing me over inside of outside of the browser. Performance dropped like a rock after Snow Leopard, so the real question is whether or not I'll continue using OS X.
I couldn't agree with you more. It's really fun to hack a game together in Javascript. I tried out JS + HTML5 two Ludum Dares ago and managed to create something fun within 72 hours[1]. The biggest issue I had at the time was dealing with cross-browser compatibility issues. Although my game would run flawlessly on Chrome, every other browser had at least one issue. I've been meaning to get around to fixing it up, but it's not much fun debugging browser compatibility weirdness...
I suspect most browsers have improved a lot in the time since then. I'd like to use Javascript for another game soon; I really like the language, despite its rough edges.
On the language comments - Have you looked into any higher level languages that compile to JavaScript, such as the newly released TypeScript? It is a superset of JavaScript with static typing and structural types. [Disclaimer: I was a test intern on the TypeScript team.]
You also say this is the last huge game with JS. Why is that?
I've glanced over some Coffeescript, but I'm probably one of the few people on earth who just finds it ugly. Typescript I've never really looked into. What are its advantages over vanilla Javascript?
And the biggest reason is because I can't trust the browsers. They run in a fragile environment that can easily be destroyed by a single update. For example, Chrome refuses to run Subbania unless it's installed as an extension because it directly modifies the pixel contents of the screen; Firefox doesn't. However, the way Chrome forces me to break up my code for "security" reasons also resulted in Firefox not reading keyboard input, which is why I provided separate HTML files for each browser. I'm sure there's some better way of handling it, but I just went with the simplest and most obvious solution.
I have a Java background, so the addition of typechecking and structural types (classes, interfaces, inheritance) without losing the JS syntax (benefit of being a superset of JS) made TypeScript a pure joy to use to dev JS apps.
As somebody who is stuck for the foreseeable future maintaining a huge AIR app I resemble that comment!
It's kinda a drag though because AIR actually provides a fantastic cross-platform solution for desktop apps. Even thought they are in ActionScript, it's extremely similar writing Javascript apps that have model binding.
I feel like I've tried every cross platform environment from AIR to Titanium to Java/QT to RealBasic, to Mono and none of them are quite as easy and predictable to get running as an AIR app. I guess going with straight-up C would be better but nobody on my team has that kind of experience.
Anyway, probably off topic rant, but I think AIR would be a reasonable choice for a desktop game. The main problem with it right now is that it feels like it's gone out of favor and everybody is abandoning the platform.
I have developed a Flash "library" for a web application and I really liked it, but I could never do much in Flash because creating a UI is a pain.
AIR is a great idea, but it would be way better (for me, at least) if they incorporated a decent HTML/CSS rendering engine that had the same potential as the ones we see on modern browsers.
The main problem with it right now is that it feels like it's gone out of favor and everybody is abandoning the platform
I totally agree. I actually dabbled in making AIR apps a few years ago and found it just great. It's really the lack of access to the iOS platform that killed AIR for me.
JS does run outside of the browser, many people are creating games on several platforms. Appcelerator's keynotes this morning at Codestrong included an OpenGL ES wrapper for Appcelerator. Exciting times for JS.
I'm working full time on a game development project in Unity. I have nothing but good things to say about it. The community is great, and our development would take twice the time without community-created tools like NGUI and PlayMaker. Unity 4 will address some major irks of mine (esp. animation handling), and a new UI engine is down the road.
Its Javascript support is probably what's drawing you to the engine though (I use C#).
I use Unity too. Even for 2d I think it is the best cross platform game engine if you don't mind spending some money. The latest Rovio 2d physics game even uses it.
I used to be all about HTML5 but after a while I realized that I don't like javascript and I hate dealing with browser quirks. C# Unity is where it's at.
Would you use a library or framework that dealt with some of the browser issues? If so, what kinds of things would you be looking for in such a framework?
In a sense, though, that discussion is entirely on topic. What Microsoft has done here has been a reaction to Steve Jobs utterance of the phrase "post-pc". They have been frantic to counter that frame ever since, insisting that they can deliver a tablet that is also a PC, with "no compromises".
Well, you can't avoid compromises. The best you can do is choose which ones you will accept. And if you don't choose, then unexpected tradeoffs will be thrust upon you.
This customer confusion over RT is just fruit from that seed.
Its quite clever how Apple used and popularized the term "post-pc" after a multi-year TV PR campaign (Mac vs PC commercials) drawing a distinct line between PCs (windows machines) and Macs.
While I take post-pc to mean Post-Desktop (and possibly laptop), Apple has cleverly separated its Mac personal computer line from "PC"s, allowing it to sound the death knell for Windows PCs, but not for its "delightful" Mac computer line up.
It's hilarious how difficult it is to get a non-programmer on Windows setup on Bitbucket (to clone a repo and then push a commit).
I don't blame this on Bitbucket, I blame the state of Windows Git applications.
My friend who is an artist (pretty technical too but he's not a programmer and never deals with SSH) is going to do some art for me for a game project I have in Bitbucket. I added him to my repo and told him to download Gitextensions, which seems to be, arguably, the best free graphical git app for Windows.
So, he downloaded it and set it up but when he started it up for the first time there was no option to clone from a source URL other than from Github.
First you have to figure out that you need to setup your SSH key and then clone the SSH url. I know that, but a non-programmer with no experience using git before would probably have zero clue.
You have to then setup your SSH key using Putty, and I'm sure we all know how awesome it is that SSH keys generated with Putty are in a different format than SSH keys generated with ssh-keygen, so pasting your public key into the Bitbucket site leads to nothing but problems. You have to erase some stuff, add "ssh-rsa" to the front, remove the newlines, etc. You can't just copy and paste the whole thing. If you aren't experienced with SSH keys you will not be able to figure it out. The bitbucket docs for this step assume you have an SSH key generated from ssh-keygen and not from putty, so they are of no help.
Once you get your ssh key straightened out then it's not too bad.
In short, it sucks. If Bitbucket wants to capture people other than programmers they need a better Windows app. For this reason alone I would be tempted to use Github instead since they have a dedicated Windows app.
Gitextensions is open source too so they it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to just add support for Bitbucket just like they have for Github.
I've used SmartGit for Windows too but I'm not a fan of their products and I was looking for something free.
Does anyone have suggestions for getting non-programmers setup on Windows?
I'm pretty sure you can use GitHub's Windows app for BitBucket Git repositories. I've pointed it to non-GitHub repositories at work in the past. You should look into it for your friend.
While more exposure to technology and better education will create more programmers, I think the demand for programmers will always outstrip the supply.