A grasp of Vision Mobile Cross Platform Development Report

It has been a couple of weeks since the Vision Mobile report on cross platform developer tools has been published. I should say, they did an amazing job in gathering such a huge amount of information and putting a long report together. I had to spend a couple of hours to read it completely and in details, then I realized that's not what I like, so I decided to write a summary which makes more sense for myself as a developer. In addition, it would help anyone who wants to decide what to do with their app idea.

First things first, let's see why do these guys speak of cross platform tools and why they think it is important to look at them. Well, there are over a 100 tools in this report and I personally know a couple that are not mentioned there. This should count for something, right? On the other hand everybody(except Google and Apple) hopes that there will be more to choose from in future. Nobody wants to see  monopoly in any market.

So Cross platform tools are important but how do they identify them. According to the report(and my personal experience), there are basically four different approaches to app development: Purely Native, Low Level Cross Platform (or as they call it runtime based or code generator), Purely HTML5(using browsers), and hybrid apps.

Hybrid apps are very hot nowadays and every single framework wants to have a say in that market.  The report says  ”Hybrid apps combine the best of both worlds”,  meaning that, using the hybrid approach HTML5 and JavaScript Developers can still use their existing web development skills to create apps and at the same time access quite a few of the device features. According to the report PhoneGap, apparat.io, Sencha Touch v2 and MoSync Wormhole are the frameworks for doing so. Something that you might want to know is that there are different approaches to creating hybrid apps.  PhoneGap, for example, requires you to create different projects in different SDKs to run your app, whereas tools like MoSync and Sencha use their own folder and project structure.

Finally comes the most important question of them all, should I use a cross platform tool or not? Here is the report's answer to that question(at least my understanding of it). 

• First, it is about what language do you want to use? If you are used to writing Objective-C and want to create iOS apps you are happy and there is no reason for using any other tool. But if you are a C++, JavaScript, or Ruby developer and want to target Android or iOS then using one these tools would be appropriate. 

• Next is about the number of platforms you want to develop for. Is it going to be only one? Can you or your firm manage and afford multiple code bases? If your answer is yes to any of these questions then you don't need any cross platform tools, unless, in some cases, you want more convenience. 

Finally you might want to know what cross platform development tools are out there. Well there are hundreds of them to choose from and I can't answer that in this post. You find their names in the actual report from here.