Robovm Alternatives

robovm reviews and mentions

• Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Feb 2025

  > I realise you can make games in any language/engine

  It's actually a bit more constrained than people realize ... Well, for desktop, you can literally use anything. But for mobile it's a bit harder because of specific platform quirks, i.e. on iOS you can't make a language that relies on a JIT compiler, so for a Java/libGDX game the best option is https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm which compiles the JVM bytecode to LLVM IR and then to native machine code.

  And then for consoles (switch/xbox/ps5) it's way worse because you're relying on commercial stuff, and the only support you get is from the engine makers themselves (Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony) so there's a lot less open source options. Basically you're stuck with C++ at that point (which Unity actually compiles your C# to under the hood for non-desktop platforms).

  Not what you asked, but I found out this stuff a while back and find it interesting, hopefully it's interesting to you too :)

• MobiVM, ahead-of-time compiler for Java bytecode, targeting iOS, macOS and Linux
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Mar 2024
• Backward Compatibility, Go 1.21, and Go 2
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Aug 2023

  Naturally depends on the use case, yet they work good enough to be in business for 20 years.

  https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/perc

  https://www.aicas.com/wp/products-services/jamaicavm-tools/

  https://www.codenameone.com/

  Android 5 & 6 (only changed back into JIT/AOT due to long compile times), https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/07/art-runtime/

  Unfortunely the best well known, Excelsior JET, is no longer in business, most likely due to GraalVM and OpenJ9 being available as free beer, while PTC, Aicas Codename One are safe in their domains.

  There is also RoboVM (https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm) as free beer, however it actually started as a commercial product, and the acquisition from Xamarin kind of stagnated it (naturally).

• Options for targeting ios with Java
  4 projects | /r/java | 4 Dec 2022

  I think libGDX still uses RoboVM, but I’m not sure if it’s being actively developed anymore.

• Specific libraries java-flutter
  1 project | /r/flutterhelp | 27 Jul 2022

  For iOS the RoboVM project intends to be an AOT compiler for Java bytecode.

• Jetpack Compose announced for Web Development
  3 projects | /r/androiddev | 4 May 2021
• Kotlin from zero with no previous programming experience
  1 project | /r/Kotlin | 14 Mar 2021

  Kotlin is not ideal for iOS development afaik (maybe with RoboVM). With regards to Android development, it is perfect. For desktop applications it's good, there are always tradeoffs here. With regards to payment, I believe it is generally the case that you're paid more the harder the language is to learn (so C > C# > Python). This also affects how much people are looking for a certain kind of developer - there are more JS jobs than jobs requiring a C++ developer. Kotlin is a good choice to start though. It's not too complicated, it's not so simple that it's limiting you somehow, it's not too slow for most applications (+ it supports native somewhat) and it has a good environment with stable libraries you can rely on.

• Sorry Java, Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA) Is Now JavaScript
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jan 2021

  Yes, these are the native code compilers for Java, able to target Apple mobile platforms.

  https://www.codenameone.com/

  https://gluonhq.com/products/mobile/

  https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm

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