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Discussion on: Help! I'm A Mobile Developer Now!

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recursivefaults profile image
Ryan Latta

Its interesting that very few answers here mention building the mobile application in their native tech.

My advice is to try to understand how much of what you're building is the product and how much of it is an experiment. The more experimental it gets the more lightweight the tech should be too. This pushes you towards the react native or the hybrid style apps.

A common thing people bring up about these frameworks is how cross-platform they are. I actually recommend you don't put much weight behind this feature. You building an app that runs on both platforms that nobody wants doesn't buy you anything. Also, each platform has unique usability patterns and device/os limitations. The tech won't solve a fundamental design/ux issue. I advocate for targeting an platform that they can have the best chance with, and let the success pay for the 2nd platform.

If you go down that route you'll find Android has the larger market share. If you dig deeper you'll find out that iOS users pay more, and you can't actually support the larger android market share.

The more sure they are that they have the app figured, then the more you'll want to be able to really polish the app towards perfection, which pushes you towards fully native.

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davesneddon profile image
DaveSneddon

Fully native means writing the same app twice in two different languages and frameworks. It also means having to keep both of those code bases in line. That's going to be a serious challenge for a single developer.