Native development

Often cited as the purest solution, native development refers to writing apps in the language common to the platform of the device. For iOS this is Swift (or previously, Objective-C), for Android it is Kotlin (or previously, Java), and for the web it is generally HTML/JavaScript:

Figure 3.1 – Swift and Kotlin logos

Native is seen as the purest solution because there is no bridge between the app and the platform, or no transpilation of code. Therefore, the code that is developed is the code that is run and talks directly to the features available from the platform, be that iOS, Android, or the web browser. Once you move away from native development, you introduce certain risks, such as the following:

• The software bridge having slow performance or deep, difficult to diagnose, bugs
• The transpilation process having deep, difficult to diagnose, bugs
• A lack of access to key platform features

It is therefore critically...