Life In 19x19

@wms: IIRC you are THE man behind KGS and it’s clients … no matter what dev environment you love but are you considering resp. re-considering an iOS client for some time in the future? Or perhaps something else, like using HTML5 for the KGS playground, anything that would enable iOS users to play on KGS?

I’d definitely be willing to spill out something 10€-ish for such an animal for iOS. No idea how to do the same for an HTML5 solution, though, but I guess I’d also pay the same amount in order to support development of whatever makes it possible to play on my iPad 2.

Greetings, Tom

Tom - check the KGS Google+ account. I was working last December on an HTML5 port. Then other things got in the way (bug fixes on the tournament system and the android client, real life, etc.) I expect to have more results soon. I won't be doing an iOS port; you can browse around here and see why, I've stated it many times.

Thanks for your quick reply, wms!

wms wrote:Tom - check the KGS Google+ account. [..] I expect to have more results soon.

OK, sounds promising

I won't be doing an iOS port; you can browse around here and see why, I've stated it many times.

<sniff>

I may ask again in a year or so if the HTML5 stuff shouldn’t be done then

Greetings, and thanks again,
Tom

Well, maybe I should clarify a bit, in particular I meant working with native code, not Java.

I really dislike working with eclipse as an IDE as well but I guess if you work with pure Java it might be an ok environment to work with. It is still vastly inferior to working with iOS though. Have you tried it out?

coderboy wrote:Well, maybe I should clarify a bit, in particular I meant working with native code, not Java.

I really dislike working with eclipse as an IDE as well but I guess if you work with pure Java it might be an ok environment to work with. It is still vastly inferior to working with iOS though. Have you tried it out?

Since I don't own a mac the iOS development environment is not available. I'm sure it's great, I've heard good things about it. But yes, in Android I do almost all Java development, and the Android SDK is very good for that. Plus IMHO Java is very easy to debug because of some features of the JVM that Android preserved in their Dalvik VM.

Will clarify my "don't have".

Like wise don't have a cell phone as no reception where I live. Sure, could take a walk in the back yard, say climb half a mile up toward the ridge and get a signal. Or take a drive somewhere. So the device could call out but never receive a call in.

Only have a dial-up internet connection.

This is a rural area.

Mike Novack wrote: Like wise don't have a cell phone as no reception where I live. Sure, could take a walk in the back yard, say climb half a mile up toward the ridge and get a signal. Or take a drive somewhere. So the device could call out but never receive a call in.
Only have a dial-up internet connection.
This is a rural area.

Why does being in a rural area matter? If you have dial up, you can still use a tablet with wifi, browse the internet and play go with a tablet instead of computer.

iPad - my children own it
and my wife uses it too (actually she got it from Hongkong - cheaper),
I bought some Go books for it
(which I also have in my cupboard)
and occasionally browse through some profess. games.

For that I use more often my HTC phone with Android.

So much to do - so few time. Took up a Chinese course again.

oren wrote:

Mike Novack wrote: Like wise don't have a cell phone as no reception where I live. Sure, could take a walk in the back yard, say climb half a mile up toward the ridge and get a signal. Or take a drive somewhere. So the device could call out but never receive a call in.
Only have a dial-up internet connection.
This is a rural area.

Why does being in a rural area matter? If you have dial up, you can still use a tablet with wifi, browse the internet and play go with a tablet instead of computer.

Actually, a tablet benefits more from a fast internet connection than a PC does. With a slow internet connection, you often prefer to open webpages in "batch mode", and this is more easily done on a PC. Having used an iPad as my primary computer for several months with a rather slow connection (DSL, but the house had a bad phone connection/wiring), I can attest to that.

Of course even with a slow connection, you may still find it worthwhile for the things that can be done with little or no internet connection. But that's a matter of taste.

I have an iPad... because I was given one.

I'd rather have an Android tablet but, honestly, I am never going to buy a tablet at all. When my iPad dies or grinds to a halt (something which it seems likely to do, soon) I will probably just live without a tablet.

I have played Go on IGS and KGS with my Android phone and, apart from the screen size limit, there's nothing wrong with the experience. Perhaps, one day, 9x9 will be taken seriously on online servers and we'll all learn to fight on a small board, on the train or the bus.

As a developer, I think the Android experience is vastly superior to Objective C written on a Mac. I have seen the Java experience and also dabbled with Mono-Touch - both beat the very essence out of Objective C!

hyperpape wrote:Having used an iPad as my primary computer for several months with a rather slow connection (DSL, but the house had a bad phone connection/wiring), I can attest to that.

I should perhaps been more explicit about what I meant by "dial-up"?

I mean no better than 28.8KBaud (audio phone speed). We don't even have DSL available. Compared to what we have available now even DSL would be fast.