ghenne
Joined 16 years ago
Karma
108
Submissions
45
Member since
Jan 6
I'm the principal developer of VoltBuilder and AppStudio.
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 5 years ago
With PhoneGap having been discontinued, you'll need to find a replacement when it's time to update your app. Cordova still works great, so you won't have to make a lot of changes.
Have a look at VoltBuilder as a replacement for PhoneGap. It does the same job (or more) and it's up to date.
Disclosure - I'm on the VoltBuilder team (and a fellow Canuck). I'm happy to answer questions.
Comment · 6 years ago
Here's the Migration Guide:
https://volt.build/news/2020/08/12/migrating-from-phonegap.h...
Comment · 6 years ago
My team has been working on a modern alternative for a few months now. With a couple months of beta under our belts, we’re ready to go live tomorrow (Aug 11) at noon EST. Our goal is an easy-to-use standalone service. Visit us at https://volt.build to sign up and start building! New signups are free for 30 days.
PS. I've been a PG user since 2010. Many fond memories of the early days!
Comment · 6 years ago
Plans have not been finalized, so it's a placeholder for now. You can see more here: https://volt.build/plan/
Comment · 6 years ago
Hey HN, I’m George and I co-developed VoltBuilder (https://volt.build) with James and Tomo. VoltBuilder is a modern replacement for PhoneGap.
Early in the COVID crisis, I was running out of work and looking for a new project. I saw Adobe was abandoning PhoneGap, a tool used by thousands to convert web apps to Android and iOS native apps. (I’ve been a PhoneGap user for 10 years, so I knew I’d miss it)
I spent a weekend going through the Android, iOS and Cordova documentation to see if it would be possible to replicate what PhoneGap does and give myself and all those users some hope. Reading hundreds of messages on StackOverflow helped me figure out some stuff that is really, seriously not documented anywhere.
By Monday, I had something like a POC working. I checked with my long term collaborators, James and Tomo. They were similarly underworked, so we decided to go ahead with the other 98% of the job to make a working product.
Technologies used include Python, Node, Jekyll, Auth0, Stripe, Cordova, Xcode, Android SDK, Express, Helmet, JWT, Flask, Boto3 and more.
VoltBuilder now has a website, a build engine, queuing and billing. We’ve built the server infrastructure to spin up multiple builds at the same time and are starting to test that.
It’s deployed in beta production. About 50 beta testers have thrown thousands of jobs at it. We’re focusing on building a community to get our first users and gather as much feedback as possible. Pricing is still up in the air, but the pricing page shows where we are heading.
Thank you for reading this far. I would love to get your feedback on VoltBuilder and to answer questions.
Comment · 6 years ago
For Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android: check out AppStudio. It lets you code in VB like BASIC. A VB like Design Screen lets you drag and drop visual controls. Output is JavaScript/HTML so it runs everywhere. (Disclosure - I'm on the team)
https://www.appstudio.dev/
Comment · 12 years ago
They're certainly teaching programming to girls. In a country where most jobs are off limits to females, developing apps might be an interesting opportunity.
Comment · 12 years ago
That's true of any subject. I think it's often more a factor of how a subject is taught than the subject itself. I've seen the curriculum they put together - it's pretty good.
The other side of this is that many kids will now be exposed to this who did not have a chance before. A few of them will discover a new life's passion. We can expect to see some great Saudi programmers in a few years. Education is a good thing.