

Ask HN: Native Android development in 2015? Worth the effort? - hikz

(I&#x27;m a first-year CS student in Denmark)<p>I was planning on beginning a free web course on Android development [1] when it hit me whether it was worth learning native app development with stuff like Ionic, PhoneGap and React Native around.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.udacity.com&#x2F;course&#x2F;ud853
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Spoom
Having recently built a relatively complicated app in Cordova, it depends on
what you're doing with the app. Is it going to need a huge amount of
interaction with the native device? If not, a cross domain framework might be
a good idea.

Basically, you can make the framework do whatever you want, it just may be
more painful to do than just coding the app natively from the start.

If you're doing something that doesn't currently have a plugin for your
framework, you're going to need to learn some native development anyway. (Java
for Android, Objective C / Swift for iOS.)

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georgeecollins
Yes.

You can always choose to use those other things, but you will be better off if
you understand native development. You'll understand what you are getting and
what are the tradeoffs.

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d_luaz
I believe so. React Native is the beacon of hope, where it would take at least
a year to stabilize and be able to do most things easily. PhoneGap had been
around for a while, no mainstream adaption yet: Viable option with a but.
Native is still relevant for performance reason. I can't tell what will happen
3 years down the road. If you need to develop a reasonable mobile app within a
year, native is still a good choice.

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aqadan90
Choosing to build Android (mobile in general) apps using a Hybrid framework
such as Cordova, Ionic, Xamarin may help you learn the intricate details of
the mobile development life cycle. No matter the framework chosen, you will
spend a considerable amount of time figuring out setup, time developing, and
time resolving issues with the problems you encounter.

With that being said, and as @Envec83 said, why go through so much trouble
when you'd spend the same amount of effort going Native? Look at the job
market; yes, you'll find some jobs asking for such hybrid frameworks. However,
most will want hands on native development with exposure to hybrid frameworks
such as those mentioned above.

In my opinion, you being a first year CS student, and with the likeliness that
you'll learn Java along the way, it's a great start to go about learning to
build Android mobile apps the native way.

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auganov
I don't think you'll get away with not learning native dev. But that doesn't
mean you shouldn't use any of these technologies (well maybe PhoneGap is not a
great idea :D). One of the things that gets people excited about React Native
is that it doesn't go out of it's way to shield you from native code or APIs.

I actually found playing around with Rhino on Android pretty illuminating.

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Envec83
Yes.

Going native gives you much more flexibility regarding the problems you can
solve, and how you can solve them.

