Feel like hacking..

Andre o Botelho

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I've never developed directly for a OS before, always used third part libraries and aways hate to code anything for native Windows but to develop for WP we need to use native coding, MS has evolver with XAML, SilverLight and the DX toolkit Helps too but there's a lot of missing basic things and many times I had to work around fixing, hacking, using a lot of mixed code to get a single feature working, eg: using isostorage(deprecated). Have someone more feeling that the SDK is buggy and unfinished or is just me? Is native coding always so complicated?
 

crash1989

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native coding is easy once you know the concepts of the platform. The isostorage has been appended with the local storage apis so that it gets in order with big windows 8. So now we can share code easily with Win 8 rather than changing the isolated storage. I feel Android's SDK to be too cumbersome, not bashing it, but the ease of setup of windows phone SDK is very easy.The documentation is really good and so are the videos. The only thing lacking IMO is help, I found I need to wait longer for help to arrive.

Java and C# are similar in many aspects (unless you go in depth) , hence I was able to develop apps right away and honestly the toughest thing in WP right now is to manage background agents from crashing or using more than its share of memory. (hate that GC.Collect() )

My suggestion is to use libraries like COding4fun, Phone Toolkit, WriteableBitmapEx, RestSharp, TweetSharp etc etc .. to decrease pain. They don't add a lot of bulk but make life alot easier.
 

a5cent

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Why do you say we need to use native code to develop for WP?

MS would certainly disagree with that statement, as they are doing everything they can to convince devs not to use native code

I don't think the native code APIs are buggy, but they are definitely incomplete, which is intentional.

And yes, coding gets increasingly more complicated the closer you do so to the machine and the OS. It's always been that way on every platform. In return your apps require less overhead to run (no CLR) and usually also get more access to OS level features. WP is one of very few OS' where the later isn't true.
 

crash1989

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Isn't native code faster. I mean Windows Phone use async all the time so that the UI thread doesn't get blocked while the IO thread (or smthing else) is processing data. That might be one reason why windows phone won't lag coz the UI thread had loaded up the elements to populate.

maybe my version of using Native code is different from yours but bugs are present like pictures being dupliacted to library and storage etc .. but I don't think they are bringing in more stuff to bridge the gap
 

a5cent

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maybe my version of using Native code is different from yours but bugs are present like pictures being dupliacted to library and storage etc .. but I don't think they are bringing in more stuff to bridge the gap.

Native code is any compiled program code that runs without the support of a runtime environment. At this point, that means C/C++. C#, VB.NET, Java and most other high level languages run only with the support of a runtime environment, which is why they aren't native. That is how MS themselves define it and that definition doesn't leave much room for interpretation.

Yes, WP still has many bugs to contend with, just like the ones you mentioned, but they aren't directly related to native code programming. Those bugs reside beneath the API layer within the OS itself. If you can trigger execution of the same code path from a managed application, you'll encounter the same bug.

The feature gap between managed and native code will be reduced over time (I don't know if the two will ever reach feature parity). Microsoft is working on that right now. WP8.1 will make another big step in that direction.

Isn't native code faster.

Microsoft's own documentation on this issue states that the performance advantages at runtime are negligible to non-existent. The one exception is the time it takes to launch an application, where native apps are consistently faster, because they don't need to initialize a runtime environment. However, that advantage can only be reaped by pure native apps with no XML or managed code support whatsoever (very few such apps exist).

The only good reason to use native code (at least at this time) is to simplify app portability (particularly games). That also explains why MS didn't find it important to expose native API's for platform specific features, as it would have defeated the whole point of supporting native code in the first place (portability).
 

Andre o Botelho

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Why do you say we need to use native code to develop for WP?

MS would certainly disagree with that statement, as they are doing everything they can to convince devs not to use native code

I don't think the native code APIs are buggy, but they are definitely incomplete, which is intentional.

And yes, coding gets increasingly more complicated the closer you do so to the machine and the OS. It's always been that way on every platform. In return your apps require less overhead to run (no CLR) and usually also get more access to OS level features. WP is one of very few OS' where the later isn't true.

Main reason like you stated is portability, some guys are reinventing the weel, I have no time for it.

"Isn't native code faster."
Ok, I'll not discuss this.... (if you have any video decoding libraty in c# please let me know, I'd like to see any video file on my WP device)

May main problem is that I have to use native-code but want to use the nice wp8 features that requires XAML/C#, that is why I ended in a buggy enviroment, MS Support but didn't worked to get this fine tuned, like you said "it would have defeated the whole point of supporting native code in the first place".

I think that the easier this integration is more apps came with the "Feel" of WP, ported apps are ugly(at least for me) because its own UI doesn't fit the OS.
 

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