I started playing around with Corona:
http://www.coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/

>Well, yes and that's part of the problem. JavaScript is interesting but as a first tier language it sucks. Even with the coming improvements of strict(er) typing, it's still all very, very hacky at best. There are lots and lots of issues there not the least of which is maintainability. Talk to anybody who actually is good at it, and even THEY will tell you how hard it is to keep all the moving parts in place.
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>The main issue is maintainability.
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>I'm not giving the back hand to mobile. Mobile is important. Native mobile however I think will not be for long. Developers can't keep supporting the crazy variety of platforms - it becomes totally unmanagable. It works now because for the most part mobile apps are simple small apps, but once you start doing more rich things it becomes unmanageable to even support two separate code bases (iOS and Android - let alone other platforms like WinMobile and RazBerry). This will change and I think - even with warts and all - the replacement will be something based on HTML and JavaScript. FireFox OS is already doing this now and that's just the opening salvo IMHO. I think Microsoft is seeing the light as well with this because they are starting to realize they have no other chance to ever get out of the distant 3rd horse in the race situation without that.
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>The missing pieces for JavaScript today are several:
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>* Comprehensive Frameworks are missing
>* The tooling for designing and managing large apps is non-existent
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>The latter is due to JavaScript's dynamic nature which makes it really, really hard to build good tooling since everything has to be basically be executed and discovered from running code (which is not always possible). There's no metadata, there's no contracts, no nothing...
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>There are valiant attempts at making this work today. Durandal and Angular are a couple that are tackling the comprehensive frameworks aspect mentioned above and do a decent job of it, but it's still a lot of external components that need to be managed. Most of all the code complexity and having to change code in many places to make things happen is daunting for most developers.
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>Tooling - well, that is the suck and while I think this will be addressed at some point (most likely by Microsoft because it seems they are the only ones who have any interest in this at all)...
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>The best we can do today it seems is use editors that are JavaScript aware. Visual Studio's JS editor is pretty good these days with extensive JS Intellisense support and runtime execution/discovery of types. There's also WebStorm which is pretty sweet for JS only development but same there - some stuff works but not all, especially if dependencies are involved.
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>Despite all these down sides, I still think that JavaScript has already won when it comes to client side languages. JS is where it is all going by sheer momentum and I don't think this will change anytime soon.
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>+++ Rick ---
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>>It is amazing how fast JavaScript is coming on. The word from Microsoft used to be C#.NET and VB.NET, with an occasional nod to C++. Now JavaScript is getting equal time as a first tier tool.
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>>It's a little weird to me because JS flies in the face of many modern software directions, object orientation to name one. But I am definitely paying attention.
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>>I am surprised that you give the back of your hand to mobile. To me it seems entirely where things are going.
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>>Don't get me started, though, on one interface to rule them all ;-) A desktop monitor is an entirely different beast from a smartphone.
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>>>John,
>>>
>>>I agree... I'm not running anywhere near the bleeding edge today. I've pulled way back and am happy using the tools I've been using for the last 5 years today.
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>>>The only place where I still bleed is with JavaScript, because the pace there is so frantic and it's a good idea to try and at least get an understanding of where things are headed. I'm not liking where we're going with this at the moment, but it's interesting to follow nevertheless.
>>>
>>>Mobile is overrated IMHO. It's important for some things (especially the consumer space) but not nearly as important as made out to be. Plus there's no money in it except for consultants - certainly not for companies. I expect this place to calm down and come to its senses and fall back onto some sorts of standards based mechanism that will work across platforms. HTML most likely... more and more is already pointing in that direction and I'm sure that's where we're going. Specialized hardware specific software is not long for this world :-) Just like Microsoft who bet big on this years ago (with WPF, then Silverlight) other vendors will fail here and eventually fall to open standards.
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>>>+++ Rick ---
>>>
>>>>>>I've said it before and I say it again. If you are at the top of your technology and you've put in your time, the amount of code you write between different tools/technologies will not vary drastically. The code I wrote with FoxPro on typical business systems at the end of that cycle, didn't look that drastically different than the .NET code I write today for business systems. Similar logic through similar business process/framework logic looks similar no matter which approach you take!
>>>>
>>>>That may be true for many needs if you have a commercial or personal framework encapsulating much of the unwieldy stuff. I assume that's your point. But what about native mobile apps which are the new frontier? We're back to pre-Windows3.0 days waiting for Ashton Tate. Current expectation is that whatever wins the mobile battle will determine what happens on desktop too.
>>>>
>>>>As for servers: depends who wins the battle between the Pricelines and eBays versus the Googles and Microsofts. The first group is committed to local apps; the other wants to rule servers up in the clouds where it all happens. While people are more than capable of putting their heads into the server noose, I vote for the Pricelines and Amazons for a simple reason: they own the customer relationship that matters, where the finger hits the touchscreen.
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>>>>So IMHO local mobile apps will win and servers increasingly will be repositories. With the current state of mobile development, I agree with Tuvia that it's a mess. But it has been for a while all across IT and the very best practitioners IMHO are the ones who stay calm/minimize change while all around them are frantically learning Visual Flavor of the Hour or rewriting stuff to keep the deck chairs nicely arranged on the Titanic. This process of being alert and ready but not going with the flow was called "masterly inactivity" in a famous medical book called House of God (in which some patients got sicker the more you did for them.) That book also advocated a simple rule: in a crisis, the first thing to do is take your own pulse. ;-)