Why Cross-Platform Isn't Worth It(epist.io)
epist.io
Why Cross-Platform Isn't Worth It
https://epist.io/blog/why-cross-platform-isnt-really-worth-it
3 comments
An argument for native mobile apps instead of cross-platform javascript apps needs to address both the desktop (are you going to write three more, or tell power users to go away?) and app fatigue.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/03/app-fatigue/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/03/app-fatigue/
Not all companies or projects needs desktop apps. If you have to have all of them you "might be" right.
For the past 20 years or so I have been building cross-platform web apps. For the past 10 years the back end has been Java for all of my paying work or Python for my low-volume side projects, both of which are cross-platform. I did a little bit before that with .NET on the back end, but previous to that it was usually PHP, Cold Fusion, Ruby or something x-platform. You could even run many .NET backends x-platform with mono.
I did a survey of x-platform toolkits that aren't web based (say Electron) and couldn't find any I could stand other than JavaFX.
I would grant that some people feel compelled to make mobile apps (guess your life wouldn't be meaningful if you didn't pay 30% of your revenue to apple...), but what I see is that customers are knocking down our doors looking for web applications. Who in their right mind would say "we only want to serve Windows users?" or "we only want to serve Macs?"