The post mentions iOS a few times.
You might be accidentally mistaking a platform for a language target - Haxe generates C++ (which can be used for iOS). That C++ is usable anywhere with any compiler toolchain. The backend (hxcpp) comes with a bunch of toolchains already set up, and builds against the iOS toolchain for you without a problem (armv6,armv7,armv7s,arm64 and simulator i386, x86_64). It also includes a few more obscure ones like WindowsRT, Blackberry, Tizen and so on.
Yes good point, the first prototype of an older game ran on mac/windows/linux/android/iOS and browser using impact.js, phonegap, titanium etc. All the usual stuff still obviously works too :)
I actually wrote the article with this in mind. Lots of people dont know how multiplayer actually works. The demo is 'in html5' because people can try it now in their browser. Also because thats where the sites target market is.
I have no objection to the actual existence of the article. I just think it's important for people to understand this fact, that seems to be increasingly misunderstood these days, that "technology" is about expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. Just because someone types program-like things into a computer doesn't mean what he is typing is technology.
If the defining property of your activity is that you are trying to negotiate messes that other people have made in order to make things happen, where the things you are making happen are not novel in themselves, that is pretty much what working in a bureaucracy is like. So you can think of it as "working in a vast decentralized computer bureaucracy" rather than "working in tech".
Last I checked, science -- not technology -- is about expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. Technology is the reification and application of that knowledge: necessarily a messy thing.
I actually really appreciate your comment about bureaucracy The main difference on my end is that I believe "working in a vast decentralized computer bureaucracy" is completely analogous to "working in tech" whether you like it or not. Bruno Latour's book Aramis is a case study in this idea. Brief review of that book here:
Any technologist who believes they're not working in a vast bureaucracy (both of the political kind and the technology itself) is not paying enough attention.
I think I will simply take his comment as a generalisation. The semantics from the dictionary simply state the application of science is technology. i.e Computer science applied, is technology.
I agree whole heartedly, learning the science is key.
How do you propose to make web games? Flash? Read Knuth and then use Flash? Abandon web games because it's too messy for you? Please be more specific about what you propose instead.
I agree. It's engineering. There's a difference between launching a spacecraft and use it to do something no one has done before and building a 50km long bridge. Both are incredibly hard and expensive, but one of them is "only" engineering, the other has science as well.
There's no such thing as working in "tech". You are always working in "tech", whether it is using Excel or WebGL. When newspapers call the latter "tech", what they really mean is "new tech".
Programming a 3D multiplayer game in a browser is a re-combination of existing technologies, and therefore not "new tech". (Though of course, new, compared to Excel, but only by a few years.)
Maro, try this link : http://centrc.com:4005/ It is a proof of concept I did in one evening for the next part of the discussion. It uses Three.js to render the stuff.
