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[ferday]

I've been learning intermediate Java for a big work project.  In the process of practicing I've made a host of work related apps, that I'd now like to run in iOS as I supply my employees with iPads

I just got dumped on at stack overflow for asking an opinion there LOL so does anyone have any thoughts on the easiest Java to iOS transfer?

I know it used to be all objective C but it seems swift is coming up fast.  Appreciate any thoughts

[blgentry]

I think you're navigating in strange waters.  Apple traditionally has been very anti-Java.  I'm no expert, but a little bit of research indicates that there *are* Java compilers available for IOS, but they are limited.  Pico Compiler was mentioned in several links I found.

I also found a google tool to convert Java to objective C.  I think it's primarily designed to convert Android apps to IOS apps though.

As you said, Objective C is the traditional core development language for IOS.  My friend who has done a lot of IOS development tells me that Swift is awesome and is definitely the way of the future for IOS development.

I have not yet tried to port my one killer Android app to IOS.  Mainly because my Mac won't run the current version of XCode, because I'm not running the latest OSX, because my machine will probably be slower with the latest Mac OS.

If it were me, I'd probably be looking to port them as native Swift apps.  But, as you may know, porting small apps rarely makes sense, as the effort involved in the port is usually around the same, or higher, than just re-writing the app from scratch in the native language.

All just my opinion of course.    Good luck Ferday.

Brian.

[ferday]

Thanks mate, always appreciate your input!

[glynor]

Apple traditionally has been very anti-Java.

Generally I agree with what Brian wrote, but... Not this line.

No. While that could be said now (and the past few years), Apple was an early proponent of Java. It was almost the default programming language for MacOS a few times over Apple's history. In fact, Apple almost bought Sun (three times) and one of the big motivating factors was to get Java.

Here's a Wayback Engine grab of http://developer.apple.com/java from back in 2009.

And, WebObjects was built by NEXT, runs entirely on top of Java, and still powers large portions of Apple's website and the iTunes store.

I'd say "traditionally, Apple was friendly with Java, until Oracle". You could say the same, a bit, about me. 

[blgentry]

Interesting.  I'm clearly "wrong" about this one.  Did my strange brain somehow confuse Java and Flash or something?  I think it may have.

I also did research that suggests that IOS makes it "hard" to run Java stuff at all so....

Anyway, interesting info.  I'm always ok with being told I'm wrong if I really am. 

I know just enough Java to write my Android apps.  It's honestly not all that fun of a language for me.  I've considered porting my "killer app" several times, but I think it would probably just be a re-write in Swift and I'd probably use the same graphics elements so it looked very similar.

Good luck to Ferday on this.

Brian.

[ferday]

said Steve “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”

i think he said it in context of Sun's death grip on Java at the time

unfortunately my little pet project is stalled, as the developer of my software i have to integrate with will be sending out the new version in .NET flavour, so now i have to re-write everything i've done from java into c#.  i'm a mere hobbyist and forced into this situation, but i have to say i think being a proper dev would be thankless, difficult work. 

i've been poking at Swift in my few spare moments, thankfully java and c# are similar, and swift is exactly as different to both of them that it's neither harder nor easier to begin my pet project.

thanks for the kind words blgentry!

[glynor]

Luckily, you can write in C# and deploy to iOS. That's how JRemote was written, in fact. And, yes, C# and Java are similar. You could call (and many have) C# "Microsoft's Java".

To answer your original question, there is no way to run Java code directly on an iOS device. There may be some Xamarin-like bridge project for it, but I don't know of one.

C# could be a very good target if you would really prefer it. But I might consider not doing it. First off, you have to learn a new language anyway. Once you understand programming fundamentals, learning new language itself is really a fairly minor part of learning to code for any platform. Learning the API is a much larger task, and that ends up being required no matter how "wrapped" of a bridge system you use. Plus, by using a "bridge", you're adding yet another external dependency (Xamarin). You just learned external dependencies can be challenging from having the legs pulled out from under you. Right?

Generally, unless you have a strong cross-platform requirement for the project, you'll have the best results if you develop directly for the intended platform. Any "time savings" you might accrue from avoiding building competency in another language are very likely to be offset by support concerns, long-term, even if the "bridge" you choose lasts (and continues to be updated) forever.

Oh, and this is minor, but... Jobs was referring to client-side applications targeting the Browser plugin in that quote (the context of the question was about Flash and Java plugins for the browser). I don't think many informed people would argue by 2007 that the Java browser plugin wasn't extremely troublesome, if not a disaster.

He also said, when he gave a Keynote address at the JavaOne conference:

We want to bring Java back to the desktop in a really big way. I am here today to personally tell you we are working hard to make Mac the best Java delivery vehicle on the planet. The biggest thing we are doing is we are going to bundle Java 2 SE into every single copy of Mac OS X that we ship later on this year.

[ferday]

Thanks Glynor!

I'm far enough along to understand what you mean about external dependencies.  Although I must admit I like writing c# and it's been mostly fun being stuck on this project