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Comment by pan69 | Hacker News Reader

I tried Titanium. Its horribly slow. You can't really build native UI's unless you mimic them. Using Javascript is super simple but you trade off in power, big time.

General rule of thumb; if you're building "content" apps you can get away with Titanium. If you're trying to build awesome experiences you'd have to go native and Xamarin is currently the best cross-platform suite out there.

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I have built multiple apps in Titanium, and I have never experienced anything even remotely "horribly slow". The performance penalty is very, very small - undetectable to the average user. I am not sure the apps you were building, but, you do have to use common sense: you can't expect to build a highly interactive game with lots of complex calculations and animations in a dynamic language without a noticeable performance penalty. For 90%+ of the apps out there though, there is no reason not to use something like Titanium if cross-platform is your priority.

Titanium isn't horribly slow, but it isn't some cross-platform panacea either. Building an app that supports iOS and Android well is still a big task. You don't just build one app and get the second platform for free. Lots of the APIs, methods and properties are platform specific or function quite differently platform to platform. Most of this is documented but some of it isn't. I don't want to be overly critical of Titanium as I think it has its place but I think your post was a bit optimistic.

BTW, the OP's original rant reminds me of a similar rant for Titanium: http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/why-you-should-sta... That rant is a few years old and Titanium has made a lot of progress since then. However, some of the points still hold true.

What's your take on Phonegap?

I haven't really used it but I guess I would classify it the same as Titanium. If you're building content apps then it might be really good. I guess it all depends on what you're trying to achieve.

Also can you tell anything about Kivy?

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