
Why do business people love cross-platform so much? - mibzman
https://pickaframework.com/articles/cross_platform_boss/
======
zhobbs
"That being said, if you’re making a game, it probably won’t work in cross-
platform"

I feel like gaming is the easiest thing to do cross-platform since you don't
rely on any native UI and OpenGL is pretty similar on different platforms.
Unity, Unreal Engine, and many others are designed to target many platforms.

~~~
justinjlynn
Well, it's not the software side that's difficult. Generally, it's the user
interaction story that's troublesome. In terms of games, it generally a
question of console, mobile, and PC/Mac. In that sense, the size of screen,
the controller and/or gamepad versus keyboard/mouse versus touch input. Each
will give players different advantages than players on other platforms. It's a
bit more difficult to do cross-platform game and keep it consistent, fun and
fair - even more so for multi-player online games. If only it were simply a
question of just porting the software, then we'd see a lot more of it, IMO.

Also, in regards to cross-platform frameworks and games: it's the additional
latency, as well as the overhead (but almost certainly the latency) of any
cross-platform compiler/library/framework that kills things. Games are right
on the edge of a 12 millisecond per frame boundary (or less!) and every cycle
usually counts for games these days (especially on limited mobile processors).

~~~
crooked-v
> as well as the overhead (but almost certainly the latency) of any cross-
> platform compiler/library/framework that kills things

You say that, but plenty of games, including twitch shooters, have been
successful using Unity and Unreal, both of which support a pretty large number
of platforms.

~~~
justinjlynn
Sure, but those are both engines - not general purpose frameworks and/or
libraries. They're specifically designed for games and game-like programs.
Granted, I didn't really make that distinction, so your point stands. However,
even if they do solve the latency issue (usually), game balance for cross-
platform use is still very much an open game-specific problem.

------
Animats
From the article: _" Sign up for my email newsletter and get a free framework
decision email course. You'll learn effective ways to research framework pros
and cons."_ It's an ad.

Too many articles like this on HN lately - short, useless, lead to an ad. This
looks like SEO crap, outsourced to Mechanical Turk or Upwork.

~~~
baxtr
Yeah, me feel the same. How do people game HN?

~~~
everdev
> Yeah, me feel the same. How do people game HN?

Sounds like a bot wrote that

~~~
baxtr
Why do you say that? I’m a real human with feelings, that just got hurt (a
bit)

------
mr_toad
I recall seeing an interview with Paul Graham (IIRC), who said that developing
web-based software allowed them to sell to Windows using customers without
having to develop in Windows.

I think this partly explains the popularity of Javascript, Electron and Web
apps among developers.

~~~
leggomylibro
As a non-businessperson, I don't really like learning to use a program if it
can't run on a Raspberry Pi/Chromebook/etc.

It seems too fragile to be worth investing too much time in; what are the
chances I'll still be able to use it in a decade or two?

Web apps are a blessing in that regard, but OSS is still better and some
companies do actually build their products for architectures other than x86.

While I'm on the subject, Eclipse versions later than 4.0 aren't built for ARM
cores. What's up with that?

------
shmerl
Same can be asked, why do some like lock-in so much that they avoid cross
platform development?

~~~
danibx
The important parts of your business are in the backend, and should be
accessible in json format. If you have a good api, developing native clients
should be simple and fast.

But what I have seen are very confident web frontend devs (and product
managers too) who only consider web solutions, and dismiss native apps as
being duplicated work.

~~~
onion2k
_The important parts of your business are in the backend, and should be
accessible in json format._

In my experience the backend of most non-tech and some tech businesses is a
database and some trivial validation rules. Everything important is in the
design of how the data is displayed on the front end.

~~~
flukus
IME a lot of data display is backend, that's why data gets joined, aggregated,
enriched, etc. The front end just formats the data, into a table, list or
whatever the onscreen representation is.

------
Chlorus
"Let's write our line-of-business app in ActiveX, everyone already has IE6
anyways"

------
danielrhodes
Beware: This article reads like it was written by somebody who has never
developed a mobile app. Thus, before you go down this road, read below.

\- Cross platform does not mean you can share the UI/design. Different mobile
platforms require different accordances that users are accomstomed to. So your
design and code might have to be different, just as it would be for native.

\- Just because you are using a cross platform framework does not mean you
sidestep the nuances of the framework itself or that of the host platform. In
fact, it just makes things worse because you have to code around these
nuances. Due to the underlying way iOS/Android work (e.g. permissions or the
differences between Android’s activities or UIViewController on iOS), you will
still need a fair amount of platform specific code.

\- Many cross platform frameworks have limited support for other libraries and
if not you need to go native to support them. At this point you may as well be
developing natively.

\- The performance can matter quite a bit. However, unlike native your ability
to do anything to resolve these issues is extremely limited. Maybe it doesn’t
matter a ton depending on the use case, but people do notice. Only being able
to solve it by dropping into native sort of defeats the purpose of cross
platform.

When you add all these up, the benefits of cross platform get very muddled.

It is far better to prove out your app on one platform, get users, solve
problems, and when you have more resources and a good process, go to other
platforms. If you don’t succeed on one platform, not being cross-platform
would be an unlikely reason.

In the case of React Native, it is possible to have a hybrid, which may let
you get around some trade offs.

------
sandov
>I would go so far as to say if you are building anything other than a game,
performance is not really going to be an issue you’ll run into.

My experience is the opposite. Every application that's more complex than a
guitar tuner starts to lag after it's been open for too long or when I'm
viewing too many resources at once: Web browsers, website-specific browsers
(e.g. reddit clients), mail clients, IM apps like telegram, etc.

Responsiveness is one of the most important aspects in a mobile app. It makes
the difference between getting the job done and wanting to smash my phone with
a hammer.

------
hvaoc
Answer lies in the question I believe, non-business users don’t necessarily
know the details and like to pick something that’s cross-platform to meet
their business objectives. Practically having two different teams in sync
needs extreme collaboration between them, often I have seen other extreme when
logic and calculations are computed differently by different teams and users
of each platforms were given different experiences. For most business apps,
cross platform serves well enough. Easy to extend an web developer to build
these apps than having to learn different platforms. Web platforms serves well
over time. There exists a certain set of problem spaces when native apps are
better. Let the needs drive the decision to choose the platform - would be the
wiser option. End of the day business pays for these apps. (I am a full stack
Dev.)

------
bsder
People love cross-platform because the half-life of app programming knowledge
is something like 4 months.

If you take your toes out of app programming for even a year, you're almost
completely lost when you come back.

Cross platform means that you don't have to climb two learning curves
simultaneously.

------
jfoster
I'm not sure the premise is correct. It doesn't seem as though this has
anything to do with business people or non-business people.

------
Kiro
> That being said, if you’re making a game, it probably won’t work in cross-
> platform.

What? Ever heard of Unity, powering the majority of games out there?

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Brahma111
In sometime the discussion will be why business people love PWA so much.

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politician
They've been sold on shortened time to market.

The author's "business people" is transparently a euphemism for "clueless
technologist" but what they actually care about is finance. Specifically, the
time value of money and why they don't want to hire another two people to do
Android and iOS in addition to the Web.

The marketing message from the cross-platform framework folks was aimed well
and hit the mark. "Spend your time and money with us (or our consultants), not
your expensive and peculiar developers. Together we'll achieve 3x the results
for 1x the cost!"

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zepolen
Because when done correctly (VS Code) it fucking rocks.

