Programming CellPhones - why most of the industry simply Don't Get It

I have to admit, I'm an avid C++ coder. On all platforms (GNU/Linux, Mac, Win)

Until recently I've thought of programming for portable devices (phones, PDAs) to be a pretty boring and pointless task - their UIs are slow (Nokia, Ericsson) and they only support Java which is a very young language compared to the vast libraries available in C/C++. And we have of course Microsoft with an even younger and more complicated tedious language for their crappy Windows Mobile platform.

But since a while there has been the iPhone. It supports C/C++.

I see many bloggers that say "the iPhone supports Objective C only for its UI development" and that is almost true.

But when you make games, realtime graphical applications or sound processing (synthesizers etc) things are different. I'll go as far as to say it has been impossible to do it properly up until now.

I read about the developers of Spore being able to port a basic version of their game in about a week, and I have myself had the same experience in porting VSXu (http://vsxu.com) for it (this is still to be finished but progressing very well). Other developers in these fields can just take their code, mangle it a tiny bit and compile and: voilá - they're done!

Face it, real coders code C/C++... You don't see any 3d engines for PS2, PS3, X-Box, Wii or any other game platform that were done in Java or possibly even in the joke environment from La La Monkey M$ Land (.NET)... I mean come on, it's not multi platform, why waste time locking yourself in?

This is why people code for the iPhone.

Also this means that you have the entire GPL open source repository of code to browse through and make use of, code and algorithms that are well tested and mature even dating back to the 70s...

OK, Apple are the worst DRM devils ever and they are in total control of their apps, but what has happened with the amount of games and applications written for the iPhone stands on its own.

I thought and hoped for that google with Android would realize this fact - especially since they're running a customized linux kernel, but no they didn't...

I'm not coding for them, nor nokia or Ericsson - it took 4 years to develop VSXu and I'm not going to re-write it in Java! It would be totally insane to even consider such a project, even worse to actually maintain it..

No, the iPhone integrates well into the already cross-platform coding/build system which already consists of Win32, Linux and Mac platforms.

Nokia, Microsoft and others are answering to the 'threat' of Apple by opening up their own App Stores, but what they should really do is support C/C++! They are missing the point, are all LAMERS and will get no support from real coders!