Jon Tara
unread,Oct 4, 2012, 11:08:50 AM10/4/12Sign in to reply to author
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You can't compare PhoneGap and Rhodes. PhoneGap is just a small "shim" between the OS and a Webview. With PhoneGap, you do all your work in Javascript. Phonegap does little more than package a web browser inside a native app, and provide the web browser with a local file store that it can pull files from.
Rhodes has Ruby, an internal server, and (if you use them) various native views, native toolbar, native tabbar, etc. It has to load a pretty good chunk of the Ruby core library in order to do anything. And there are core Rhodes components that are written in Ruby.
I don't think it's possible to reduce this, and I'm completely unconcerned. A 2.5MB app is minimal these days, and way under the OTA download limit for any platform. MIne is about 4MB, and I consider that quite reasonable.
I just worked on a client's app that is 30MB, and I think it's more typical of the kind of app that might also be done in PhoneGap. The reason it is 30MB is because it has a large amount of built-in offline data. (Mostly map tiles.)
If your app can be done in 300K with Phonegap, perhaps you just don't need Rhodes. If you are doing anything substantial, though, Phonegap, IMO, is going to make life miserable as you constantly work-around the limitations of the environment.
It's like comparing a Smart Car to an SUV. If you are happy with the Smart Car and it meets your needs, there's no sense trying to talk you into the SUV. You can park it anywhere, it sips gas, but there isn't any room for the inlaws, and it takes two trips to the grocery to get everything home.