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> My experience is that as a technical person with a beefy computer, I am mostly frustrated by the knowledge of how much of a waste these apps are, and how much

> My experience is that as a technical person with a beefy computer, I am mostly frustrated by the knowledge of how much of a waste these apps are, and how much faster they could start/run on my devices. I understand this point, and I definitely agree. But I'm also of the opinion that some of these companies wouldn't be as popular if they tried to build native apps from the start. They wouldn't be able to move so quickly, and would be restrained by money and resources. Of course, once you grow (Slack & Spotify) you should invest in making the experience as painless as possible.

mercer 6y ago
Maybe. I used to assume as much, and as a solo developer I think there's a good chance I would pick a non-native solution when necessary. However, not only am I starting to doubt this, I think it's even less of an issue for a startup that can afford at least a handful of developers. First off, the few projects I've done with 'web tech' that had to be native-ish (cordova, so web apps as 'proper' apps on your phone) have made me more skeptical. Sure, at first it was nice to be able to build things using a stack I was mostly familiar with. But not properly knowing the development and build tools for Android/iOS made me extremely uncomfortable. And if I'd bother mastering those, I might as well go for native. Having to jump through various hoops to get something that felt as native as possible was difficult too. And finally so many things were not part of my 'web developer toolset' anyways that I might as well have learned the native approach (notifications, any other integrations with the OS that web doesn't offer or doesn't offer on the major platforms). I mostly came away from that experience wondering if the main reason why we do these things is a (somewhat) unreasonable fear of learning a new tech stack. I can totally see the use case for Electron and Cordova and RubyMotion and so on. But for a sufficiently experienced developer it might already be preferable to just learn iOS and/or Android development, and for a company that can afford a handful of developers getting one of each, at first, should be doable. But again, I could be wrong and it's just a growing feeling. Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of work needed to do native development. I haven't had the time to properly do so yet...
- woutr_be 6y ago
  I've done both React Native / Cordova apps, and native iOS apps. To be honest, in terms of development, they both felt the same to me (ignoring language), as in, I was able to build both apps roughly at the same speed. However with one, I also had an Android app with minimal efforts, with the other, I had to start from scratch again. I agree with you on the tool set tho, I also felt quite uncomfortable not knowing how exactly React Native was doing all the things to make it work for Android / iOS, and sometimes it was extremely difficult to access native functionality. At the end of the day, I don't know what the correct use case is, I see advantages to both.

mercer 6y ago

Maybe. I used to assume as much, and as a solo developer I think there's a good chance I would pick a non-native solution when necessary. However, not only am I starting to doubt this, I think it's even less of an issue for a startup that can afford at least a handful of developers. First off, the few projects I've done with 'web tech' that had to be native-ish (cordova, so web apps as 'proper' apps on your phone) have made me more skeptical. Sure, at first it was nice to be able to build things using a stack I was mostly familiar with. But not properly knowing the development and build tools for Android/iOS made me extremely uncomfortable. And if I'd bother mastering those, I might as well go for native. Having to jump through various hoops to get something that felt as native as possible was difficult too. And finally so many things were not part of my 'web developer toolset' anyways that I might as well have learned the native approach (notifications, any other integrations with the OS that web doesn't offer or doesn't offer on the major platforms). I mostly came away from that experience wondering if the main reason why we do these things is a (somewhat) unreasonable fear of learning a new tech stack. I can totally see the use case for Electron and Cordova and RubyMotion and so on. But for a sufficiently experienced developer it might already be preferable to just learn iOS and/or Android development, and for a company that can afford a handful of developers getting one of each, at first, should be doable. But again, I could be wrong and it's just a growing feeling. Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of work needed to do native development. I haven't had the time to properly do so yet...

woutr_be 6y ago
I've done both React Native / Cordova apps, and native iOS apps. To be honest, in terms of development, they both felt the same to me (ignoring language), as in, I was able to build both apps roughly at the same speed. However with one, I also had an Android app with minimal efforts, with the other, I had to start from scratch again. I agree with you on the tool set tho, I also felt quite uncomfortable not knowing how exactly React Native was doing all the things to make it work for Android / iOS, and sometimes it was extremely difficult to access native functionality. At the end of the day, I don't know what the correct use case is, I see advantages to both.