<story><title>I made an iPhone game with PhoneGap and won&apos;t do it again</title><url>https://bokstuff.com/i-made-an-iphone-game-with-phonegap-and-ill-never-do-it-again/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>candiodari</author><text>Of course the little detail here is that 50 tiny sprites apparently counts as graphically intensive.&lt;p&gt;Why do web developers constantly make the argument that Javascript is not slower than C (or Swift, or C++, or any native programming language) ? The difference is night and day, 5000% and up for simple things like drawing.</text></item><item><author>memracom</author><text>This sounds like the same old rule that has existed for the last 30 years or more. If you want to build an app that uses graphically intensive animations, build as close to the metal as possible and do not rely on layers provided by the OS.&lt;p&gt;I learned nothing from this because if I was going to build a game like he described, I would suck 
it in and get down to the platform&amp;#x27;s assembly language layer which for IOS is ObjectiveC and for Android is Java.&lt;p&gt;It would be far more interesting to read a review that explores the boundary of what works well in PhoneGap and what doesn&amp;#x27;t. Clearly lots of successful apps are built in PhonegGap&amp;#x2F;Cordova. We could have the same conversations about desktop apps or server apps. Too many layers make things easier to build but impose a performance penalty. It is wise to think before you build and do some architecture and engineering before coding. Writing code is NOT engineering.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mahn</author><text>C is always going to be faster than almost anything you compare it to, of course. But the V8 interpreter is also not 5000% slower; for computationally intensive tasks it&amp;#x27;s not actually significantly slower. The problem in OP&amp;#x27;s case is that JS lacks an interface to interact with the display and render that is as &amp;quot;close to the metal&amp;quot; as their &amp;quot;native&amp;quot; counter parts. You are drawing sprites on a html canvas which is then rendered by a web view, which just not that great no matter what language you use to get there.&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;m getting at is that it&amp;#x27;s easy to blame Javascript, but really that&amp;#x27;s not the whole picture, and if Google and Apple chose to support Javascript natively it wouldn&amp;#x27;t have these dramatic performance issues.</text></comment>
<story><title>I made an iPhone game with PhoneGap and won&apos;t do it again</title><url>https://bokstuff.com/i-made-an-iphone-game-with-phonegap-and-ill-never-do-it-again/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>candiodari</author><text>Of course the little detail here is that 50 tiny sprites apparently counts as graphically intensive.&lt;p&gt;Why do web developers constantly make the argument that Javascript is not slower than C (or Swift, or C++, or any native programming language) ? The difference is night and day, 5000% and up for simple things like drawing.</text></item><item><author>memracom</author><text>This sounds like the same old rule that has existed for the last 30 years or more. If you want to build an app that uses graphically intensive animations, build as close to the metal as possible and do not rely on layers provided by the OS.&lt;p&gt;I learned nothing from this because if I was going to build a game like he described, I would suck 
it in and get down to the platform&amp;#x27;s assembly language layer which for IOS is ObjectiveC and for Android is Java.&lt;p&gt;It would be far more interesting to read a review that explores the boundary of what works well in PhoneGap and what doesn&amp;#x27;t. Clearly lots of successful apps are built in PhonegGap&amp;#x2F;Cordova. We could have the same conversations about desktop apps or server apps. Too many layers make things easier to build but impose a performance penalty. It is wise to think before you build and do some architecture and engineering before coding. Writing code is NOT engineering.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>erikpukinskis</author><text>&amp;gt; The difference is night and day, 5000% and up for simple things like drawing.&lt;p&gt;I find that seriously doubtful, you&amp;#x27;re going to have to provide a citation if you want me to swallow that.&lt;p&gt;The relevant comparison is a single JavaScript function in Firefox looping through a static array and making WebGL calls vs. a C++ function looping through the same array and making OpenGL calls.&lt;p&gt;If the difference is 5000% or more I will donate $20 to the charity of your choice.</text></comment>