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Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

pickaframework.com

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Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#11

Post by onion2k »

danibx wrote: post #6
shmerl wrote: post #2

Same can be asked, why do some like lock-in so much that they avoid cross platform development?

The important parts of your business are in the backend, and should be accessible in json format. If you have a good api, developing native clients should be simple and fast. But what I have seen are very confident web frontend devs (and product managers too) who only consider web solutions, and dismiss native apps as being duplicated work.

The important parts of your business are in the backend, and should be accessible in json format.

In my experience the backend of most non-tech and some tech businesses is a database and some trivial validation rules. Everything important is in the design of how the data is displayed on the front end.

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#12

Post by chillacy »

Splines wrote: post #9
danibx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important parts of your business are in the backend, and should be accessible in json format. If you have a good api, developing native clients should be simple and fast. But what I have seen are very confident web frontend devs (and product managers too) who only consider web solutions, and dismiss native apps as being duplicated work.

> and dismiss native apps as being duplicated work. It's worse than duplicated work, it's duplicated different work.

You got your iOS team, iOS backlog, iOS bugs, iOS build / deploy pipeline, Android team, Android backlog, Android bugs, Android build/deploy pipeline, Web team...

And if you do everything right, both app experiences will be mostly the same.

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#13

Post by killjoywashere »

zhobbs wrote: post #5

"That being said, if you’re making a game, it probably won’t work in cross-platform" I feel like gaming is the easiest thing to do cross-platform since you don't rely on any native UI and OpenGL is pretty similar on different platforms. Unity, Unreal Engine, and many others are designed to target many platforms.

It also doesn't have the regulatory hurdles of medical devices or aerospace. So that's nice.

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#14

Post by bsder »

People love cross-platform because the half-life of app programming knowledge is something like 4 months.

If you take your toes out of app programming for even a year, you're almost completely lost when you come back.

Cross platform means that you don't have to climb two learning curves simultaneously.

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#15

Post by duxup »

mr_toad wrote: post #4

I recall seeing an interview with Paul Graham (IIRC), who said that developing web-based software allowed them to sell to Windows using customers without having to develop in Windows. I think this partly explains the popularity of Javascript, Electron and Web apps among developers.

Yeah for most business web apps are great. Got a browser? There's a good chance we've got most of the work done and maybe we need to tweak some UI for your funky device, but otherwise you're ready to go.

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#17

Post by hvaoc »

Answer lies in the question I believe, non-business users don’t necessarily know the details and like to pick something that’s cross-platform to meet their business objectives. Practically having two different teams in sync needs extreme collaboration between them, often I have seen other extreme when logic and calculations are computed differently by different teams and users of each platforms were given different experiences. For most business apps, cross platform serves well enough. Easy to extend an web developer to build these apps than having to learn different platforms. Web platforms serves well over time. There exists a certain set of problem spaces when native apps are better. Let the needs drive the decision to choose the platform - would be the wiser option. End of the day business pays for these apps. (I am a full stack Dev.)

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#18

Post by justinjlynn »

zhobbs wrote: post #5

"That being said, if you’re making a game, it probably won’t work in cross-platform" I feel like gaming is the easiest thing to do cross-platform since you don't rely on any native UI and OpenGL is pretty similar on different platforms. Unity, Unreal Engine, and many others are designed to target many platforms.

Well, it's not the software side that's difficult. Generally, it's the user interaction story that's troublesome. In terms of games, it generally a question of console, mobile, and PC/Mac. In that sense, the size of screen, the controller and/or gamepad versus keyboard/mouse versus touch input. Each will give players different advantages than players on other platforms. It's a bit more difficult to do cross-platform game and keep it consistent, fun and fair - even more so for multi-player online games. If only it were simply a question of just porting the software, then we'd see a lot more of it, IMO.

Also, in regards to cross-platform frameworks and games: it's the additional latency, as well as the overhead (but almost certainly the latency) of any cross-platform compiler/library/framework that kills things. Games are right on the edge of a 12 millisecond per frame boundary (or less!) and every cycle usually counts for games these days (especially on limited mobile processors).

Re: Why do business people love cross-platform so much?

#19

Post by sandov »

>I would go so far as to say if you are building anything other than a game, performance is not really going to be an issue you’ll run into.

My experience is the opposite. Every application that's more complex than a guitar tuner starts to lag after it's been open for too long or when I'm viewing too many resources at once: Web browsers, website-specific browsers (e.g. reddit clients), mail clients, IM apps like telegram, etc.

Responsiveness is one of the most important aspects in a mobile app. It makes the difference between getting the job done and wanting to smash my phone with a hammer.

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