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It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

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Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#121

Post by pbhjpbhj »

JBReefer wrote: post #62
cjcenizal wrote: post #46

Pro-tip: You can make your article sound like it's been written by a grown-up if you find/replace all instances of the word "fucking" and "fuck" with "".

People also just speak differently. You're allowed to curse on the internet, and as someone who lives in Queens, I honestly have trouble speaking without cursing. It feels kind of stilted and overly proper. Language is fluid and evolves.

But presumably you don't write in every "um", , stutter and mis-speak so why keep in the swear words rather than cutting them and increasing your readability and information density? You may have trouble speaking without cursing but you clearly manage to write without including the curse words.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#122

Post by jdmichal »

tootie wrote: post #49
mikeryan wrote: post #17

One app for iOS, one for Android, and I got over 90% consumer coverage However with a huge friction point of requiring users to download and install an app.

And not being searchable or deep linkable or shareable.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by each of these, but at least in Android apps can register to open URLs. So you can search for and share, say, a Facebook link. Tap it, and it opens in the Facebook app (or the browser, or any other app registered to handle the URL, your choice!).

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#123

Post by LnxPrgr3 »

mrlatinos wrote: post #77
deanCommie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? What is this condescending bullshit. Nobody is arguing these things CAN'T be done, just that it's too much effort on the web, and the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

This is also what I took from the article. Everything they're wanting to accomplish is certainly possible, but instead of just knowing the ins and outs of each platform, you have to know the ins and outs of each browser AND how each can affect the other browsers. Beyond this, it is clear to me when an iOS-minded developer creates a web app that ends up on Android. Each have their own specific styles, and this gets lo…

Not to mention the effect of time. The Web is not a stable application environment, and you may get caught in limbo, where the old way to do something is technically deprecated, but only one browser implements the new scheme, and only in nightly builds and even then only if you launch with --please-segfault-hourly. But using the deprecated API means at some arbitrary point in the future your working code will stop working.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#124

Post by tdkl »

weego wrote: post #45
asimuvPR wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does make a couple of interesting points: 1. The cost of building an app can be calculated in the back of a napkin. The cost of a web app that works consistently across devices? Not so much. 2. The cost of building backend services has been commoditised to a degree. Front end web development? Its downright hard finding someone that can do good front end web work. 3. The reality that big companies (silos) will push…

If the idea of the cost of an android app is will it work fine on a Samsung galaxy 1 behind the current gen then sure a napkin will work. I feel like doing anything non trivial for Android with a wide target audience is not always any more reliable than the Web experience claimed in the article

Well if you know what your target audience is, you can easily go by that at first.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#125

Post by tracker1 »

emdd wrote: post #110
pboutros wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you go to this effort is why I love HN.

If only we could get notifications for replies & a decent mobile app existed.

I just check a couple times a day... honestly, I'm usually too busy when I'm not checking HN to deal with a reply right at any given moment anyway. It's a forum.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#126

Post by llamataboot »

"native app developers seems to think $50K is the smaller amount you should bill for a native app these day"

Ummm, yeah, I would say $50k would cover a small native app using Parse or similar or an extremely light backend. Even a medium size native app is going to run $100-150k. That's the price of software development if it's happening in the US.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#127

Post by Dr_tldr »

hnal943 wrote: post #35
54mf wrote: post #23

"You want mobile notifications? Sure, but not on mobile Safari." You can do this with PhoneGap. "Multiple line ellipsis? Sure, but only on webkit." Okay, yeah, this sucks. "Consistent rendering size across browsers? Just fuck off." This is probably your fault. "We fix a layout bug on Safari and break something on Edge." This is probably your fault. "We change font size on Chrome and now all you can see on Firefox is…

This is probably your fault That's the point of the article. Getting these things right on the web is non-trivial (and therefore expensive).

For a totally new project, especially with React and React Native, it's not trivial to get things right, but it's not that hard either. Technically it's not "one app", but if you build them in parallel and you know what you're doing, 90% of the codebase can be shared.

The author is putting forth a false dichotomy between "write one web app that works on everything" and "write a new app from scratch for every platform." The right answer in 2016 is a hybrid approach.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#128

Post by wvenable »

mikeryan wrote: post #92
wvenable wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people think this is a huge friction point. Installing apps is comfortable, familiar, and easy for people. By comparison, finding a mobile web application in the browser on a phone has significantly more friction.

I might of not been clear, but my intent with the comment was to encompass the entirety of friction points involved in getting an app installed on a user's device, from discoverability on down.

True but there's additional friction on the web app side as well. At this exact moment without looking at my browser, I'm not sure how to add an app to the homescreen. How many users actually know how to do that implicitly?

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#129

Post by tracker1 »

donatj wrote: post #66

I don't think that's remotely true if you keep the responsive web app simple. YNGNI and KISS and what not. I've been doing this for over ten years. In that time I've seen large web applications built for under 4k; I've also seen massively overbuilt simple applications go for 50k+. It comes down to often how needlessly complex you make the stack. If you stick with solid simple guaranteed tech instead of cutting edge y…

With a little practice, you can do it with newer tech too... I've banged out several small apps using react+redux on webpack+babel, and it's gone really smooth and came out really light and decently structured.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#130

Post by wvenable »

btilly wrote: post #120
wvenable wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people think this is a huge friction point. Installing apps is comfortable, familiar, and easy for people. By comparison, finding a mobile web application in the browser on a phone has significantly more friction.

A lot of people in the real world don't want to install apps. Also I disbelieve on how hard it is to find a mobile web application on a phone. Find it once, save a shortcut to a web page on your home screen, and now it is as easy to launch as an app. I actually find this easier to do than it is to install an app.

> A lot of people in the real world don't want to install apps.

A lot of just a specific subset of highly technical people? I don't think I've met anyone with an aversion to apps who also used a ton of mobile web apps.

> save a shortcut to a web page on your home screen

How many people did you lose at this point?

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