I've recently tried Appcelerator's Titanium Studio and so far I'm loving the fact that it uses plain HTML and JavaScript integration to allow web developers to create desktop applications.
However, some things are bothering me such as the fact that I've read so much not-so-good stuff related to it with regards to cross-platform mobile deployment (memory leaks and such). Now I'm not (yet) planning to do mobile apps with it and just want to use it for desktop apps but I'm worried that I might encounter said memory leaks on my desktop apps. The mem leaks (as stated by many) seem to be noticeable when your app gets more complex and when you're halfway through your large project. I wouldn't want to live in "hacks" and "workarounds" when my app would be at a complex state while using Titanium.
Also I find it that their documentation really doesn't help much especially if you're a beginner on that platform.
If you aren't recommending Titanium then what other free alternatives can you recommend? I would then be looking for something as easy as Titanium wherein I get to use familiar coding conventions, thus, cutting the time needed to learn a new language wholely from the start.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: On the side of security, I recently found out that the HTML pages that I use are being compiled as plain HTML without any protection inside my Titanium apps. How do I secure my source with this? I don't see any way for me to create secure commercial apps using such. Can anyone enlighten me?
I have developed a handful of applications using Titanium and as your application grows if you do not architect it 'right' it could suffer from memory issues. At least in respect to mobile (1.7) and single versus multi context apps. One mistake you can make is model you app after how the kitchen sink is architected. Which is a common way people architect their apps since that is where they look at code samples (I'm using mobile Titanium as an example).
If you are serious about Titanium use their online training videos and go through the recommended ways to develop your applications and you shouldn't run into many memory issues. I have used some code from the kitchen sink like one of the mobile photo gallery swipe examples and that had a terrible memory leak. They did end resolving it though. So that's good, anything in the core or their examples that are troublesome they take seriously.
At this point based on their maturity and financial backing I would be comfortable doing just about anything in Titanium.