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For mobile, if you ask me, the only sane cross-platform strategy is what Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile [1] intends to do: portable business logic, and leave the U

For mobile, if you ask me, the only sane cross-platform strategy is what Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile [1] intends to do: portable business logic, and leave the UI aspects to each platform, keeping them native. Both Android and iOS have been making strides in simplifying DX for composing expressive UIs. It only makes sense to use those new Android Studio/XCode features as they come. [1] https://kotlinlang.org/lp/mobile/ https://kotlinlang.org/lp/mobile/

samwillis 5y ago
While I agree where Kotlin is going with their multi platform tooling is great, I do think it’s just one more option in an already good bag of options. And a strong one at that. My one observation though is that for many (the majority?) of mobile apps the UI layer is the vast majority of the app, easily 70-80%. Especially for apps where the business logic is calling a http api, which most CRUD type apps are. For these a cross platform toolkit that abstracts away ui differences so you only have to build it once is a massive plus.
- vanilla_nut 5y ago
  KMM shows promise for writing the same db/network logic for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. (less so on desktop, but it does work) Realized expectations give you a good way to extend that underlying layer a bit further. But you’re totally right — in the end, you still need to undetstand iOS and Android development, UI in particular, to make it work. It also doesn’t help that KMM is currently a buggy mess, Android Studio has a million issues with it, and the documentation is sparse to nonexistent for completely pedestrian use cases (good luck writing tests for anything). I hope it shapes up soon though.
jamil7 5y ago
I've been waiting for the right opportunity to use it and for it to mature a little more. I really wish we could go the other way since we have a bunch of existing Swift packages and our team is much stronger on iOS than Android.

samwillis 5y ago

While I agree where Kotlin is going with their multi platform tooling is great, I do think it’s just one more option in an already good bag of options. And a strong one at that. My one observation though is that for many (the majority?) of mobile apps the UI layer is the vast majority of the app, easily 70-80%. Especially for apps where the business logic is calling a http api, which most CRUD type apps are. For these a cross platform toolkit that abstracts away ui differences so you only have to build it once is a massive plus.

vanilla_nut 5y ago
KMM shows promise for writing the same db/network logic for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. (less so on desktop, but it does work) Realized expectations give you a good way to extend that underlying layer a bit further. But you’re totally right — in the end, you still need to undetstand iOS and Android development, UI in particular, to make it work. It also doesn’t help that KMM is currently a buggy mess, Android Studio has a million issues with it, and the documentation is sparse to nonexistent for completely pedestrian use cases (good luck writing tests for anything). I hope it shapes up soon though.

jamil7 5y ago

I've been waiting for the right opportunity to use it and for it to mature a little more. I really wish we could go the other way since we have a bunch of existing Swift packages and our team is much stronger on iOS than Android.