Why is the Year 2023 going to be the best year to build your dream mobile app? Are there any miracles going to happen this year? But even this moment of the year 2023 has already started and after a couple of weeks February will be over and we can say hello to the next month, March. So, what will happen in the next 10 months? But right now, the miracle is going to start, and you are going to face that miracle with your own eyes. 

Most tech lovers are planning to build their dream mobile app and have fun using that or add it to the play store/app store or any marketplace and start to build their own enterprise. But the question is most of them are not having the right coding skills or better knowledge to start the project. So, this will explain to you how to select the best-suited method to start coding to make your dream come alive.

Choose the right stack

When developing apps, you must adhere to several things like what my programming language will be, etc. There are plenty of solutions to choose from, hundreds of paths to choose and a bunch of languages to select from. We already know that there are several platforms to kick off. Initially, you can create your own app by selecting the native tools which were distributed by the company that developed the operating system where your app will be going to play. As simply we can call it as ‘Native app development’. Then there is another method called cross-platform app development. There are several frameworks under cross-platform app development like Flutter, React Native, Xamarin, Ionic, etc. 

Native vs Cross Platform development

First, we need to understand what native app development and cross-platform app development are. Native app development is the methodology where you first select the operating system that is going to be the place where the app is going to play. And then you have the specific tools which were provided by the companies who implemented that operating system. For android app development, Google has provided a software called Android Studio and it will be the IDE (Integrated development environment) for developing android apps. It assists to check your app using the built-in emulator and can have a realistic feeling about the app. For implementing android apps, you must have knowledge related to Java or Kotliln. Because those are the programming languages used for android app development. The next platform is iOS app development. To develop apps for the Apple ecosystem you must have familiarity with Swift or Objective-C programming languages. With that, you must have an apple device of your own, at least a MacBook or iMac computer because apple needs its ecosystem to develop these apps on its own.

Native Mobile Apps

There are a bunch of advantages to the native app development process as well as while having some drawbacks. Better performance, advanced customization, greater security, enhanced user experience, instant updating, fewer bugs, improved scalability, and easier launch to the market are some of them. When comparing the advantages there are very few drawbacks like the app can only be used with a specific platform, and needs to be developed the same app for different operating systems, etc. Even though you need to develop the same app for various platforms by learning several languages, native app development is very popular due to those benefits that cannot have in cross platform app development.

Cross-platform Mobile Apps

In cross-platform app development, you only need a single code base. You can build your app for various operating systems like iOS and android by using the same code. That highlights the most popular benefit of the outcome of cross-platform app development. Like in native app development, there are several programming languages and frameworks you must learn to build cross-platform mobile apps. Flutter is the most popular cross-platform framework used by thousands of developers all over the world that developed by Google. Dart is the programming language used for Flutter. Apart from developing apps for mobile devices, Flutter is supporting to the implementation of apps for the windows operating system. The next framework is React Native which was developed by meta. The programming language behind React Native is JavaScript or TypeScript. It is a very beginner-friendly framework to learn how to start app development. Ionic is another framework that supports to build of cross-platform mobile apps and even progressive web apps. This Ionic framework is built at the top of AngularJS which is very easy-peasy to learn if you familiarized with AngularJS. Finally, the last cross-platform mobile app framework is Xamarin which has been developed by Microsoft. Therefore, there are several cross-platform frameworks you can select to build your app. But why? Still, you have these kinds of frameworks to build your dream app, still, there are advantages and disadvantages in these cross-platform frameworks.

The development is pretty fast because with a singular code base, you can develop a single app for several operating systems, and it helps to reduce the cost for the development stage. Even if the codebase is single, it can reach a vast range of audiences because the app can be played on several platforms. Therefore the User Experience (UX) is uniform for each platform because the app will perform the same behavior on all these platforms. No matter having those specific advantages, there are several disadvantages in the cross-platform app development model. Even though the UX is uniform, but it is a compromised UX. Therefore, these apps cannot easily interact with various features of the operating system. And the most highlighted disadvantage is the loss of security. Rather than the native app development in cross-platform apps used thousands of third-party libraries and APIs. Therefore, it makes security holes in those apps, and it is not applicable when using the app. There is a big challenge for the development teams because they have to learn different tools for building a single app. As well as integrating apps with different local settings, preferences, and notifications for every platform is more difficult than in native app development. 

By comparing each development method native app development with cross-platform app development both have their own pros and cons when developing apps. But before building any kind of app the developers need to think about which platform this app is going to be developed on and which kind of features this app is going to be included in the outcome. As the conclusion, everything can be concluded in to one place. No one can say that this is better than that or that is better than this. But the best thing is they should need to think about every requirement and choose one of these above-mentioned methods (native app development or cross-platform app development) to get a head start to build their dream mobile app.