Cross Platform Vs Native Apps

Day 270 / 366

Let me explain something basic about Mobile App development to you. Just like websites are written using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, mobile applications are written using different programming languages. Since iOS and Android are to different OS’s, the apps for them needs to be written in different languages — Java or Kotlin for Android and Swift for iOS.

This was an issue for developers. This meant that if you wanted to build an app you would need to hire both Java and Swift developers, maintain two different codebases and probably write lots of duplicate code amongst both of them. To make this even tough, to write code in swift you must have a MacBook or a similar apple computer. This way of writing apps was termed as “Native App Development”.

The opposite of this is cross-platform development. In this, you just have one codebase written in a single programming language. This code during compilation is turned into native Android or iOS code. React Native, flutter etc are some cross-platform frameworks that have become quite popular lately.

The second approach is great for developers. It means that you only need to hire JS developers and maintain a single codebase. It also means that you would be building much faster than if you had to develop 2 separate apps natively. This is the reason why most teams today are moving towards this.

The downside is that cross-platform apps are just not as good as native apps. They are glitchy, they feel slow. Some features like live tracking or Bluetooth will just make you want to leave coding altogether if you ever try to do them with React Native.

In my opinion, React Native is great for prototyping, but if you want to build something good and ship it, you should switch to proper native apps.