We want to immediately introduce the definitions of cross-platform and native development.
Cross-platform development is the development of applications on tools from third-party creators that are in no way associated with device manufacturers. The main task of cross-platform development tools is to provide programmers with a tool for parallel creation and debugging of applications for several operating systems at once, in our case for iOS and Android.
Native development is the development of applications in languages and tools provided by manufacturers of operating systems and devices.
It should be noted right away that the key difference between native and cross-platform applications is performance and the ability to solve low-level applications. But this nuance is more related to large projects, which allows small and medium-sized businesses, as well as IT startups to choose in favor of cross-platform development.
Today, business is important for efficiency and quality, combined with the attractive price of developing a solution to optimize and improve any processes. Based on the definitions of native and cross-platform development, it can immediately be noted that the second is more budgetary in terms of investments, but as a result, no less high-quality output than the first. Another tangible plus of cross-platform development is the speed of creating applications.
We highlight the following cross-platform application development tools:
React native
This is a framework for cross-platform development of mobile applications, which is based on the programming language JavaScript.
Thanks to the Expo tool, which is now the base SDK for development on React Native, the customer gets the opportunity to observe the process of application development from his smartphone, and the developer is an excellent tool that speeds up the development and debugging process.
React Native is undoubtedly the best platform in terms of speed of writing and converting source code into native OS elements, which greatly speeds up the development process.
It is worth noting that Facebook and Instagram used React Native to create their mobile applications, which are considered one of the most used applications in the world.
Qt
Qt is a development platform for cross-platform mobile and desktop applications, which is based on the C ++ programming language. Applications created using this tool are highly productive, since they are very similar in nature to native ones, and built-in tools provide the developer with complete control over the creation process.
Xamarin
Microsoft Visual Studio Xamarin allows you to create applications for various platforms, such as iOS and Android, using a single .Net Core framework. The main programming language in Xamarin is C #.
Xamarin produces mobile applications with good performance, almost similar to native applications. It is worth noting that approximately 75% of the code will be identical for all platforms for which the application is developed, which in our opinion is a minus, for example, in comparison with React Native, when developing for which you can completely abandon native interventions.
