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by bryik 2038 days ago
So the choice would be: build an Android app and an iOS app, or build a web app? Eh, I'd rather build a web app.
2 comments

What would users like to use more?
If you’re ever in the position where you have to market an app you’ll soon discover actually just getting users to commit to installing something which they’ve never heard of is a massive hurdle - compared to clicking a link in a browser.
there’s definitely pros and cons for both, depending on what you’re trying to do
lol — have you tried to engage, in a serious way, with the JavaScript ecosystem? It is a _dumpster fire_ to produce anything that is reasonably as interactive and complex as an iOS Application.

I do agree, however, with the idea that some things ought _not_ be apps, especially things that are dead simple, for which it _truly is_ easier to develop a web application.

Lol, seems like you haven't tried to engage with the web ecosystem in a serious way. Web apps with TypeScript and React/Vue/Svelte are the easiest, most productive way of making software that runs immediately anywhere, and the ecosystem has everything (don't forget about Wasm).

SwiftUI is nice, but needs a lot more years until it reaches the level of React.

Android libs are a joke.

(I write enterprise React applications last 6 years, and used to work with WinForms before that.)

This is totally untrue when you start building an application and care about superior interactivity and sophisticated UI/UX patterns
Yeah, now I can see that you have indeed never really tried.
>Yeah, now I can see that you have indeed never really tried.

This is totally untrue!

I am open to the possibility, however, that I have been working with a challenging front-end codebase and that, on that basis, I may not have seen the best that JS has to offer. But in my experience — intermittently building toy iOS apps the last few years and having also built some production react apps in a large codebase (perhaps not a fair apples-to-apples comparison) — iOS has felt much more straightforward for creating apps with idiomatic UI/UX.

Forgive me if I came off as a bit glib. But I do tentatively, at least, still hold my original position; though am open to the possibility of being wrong!