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 – that is, there is 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 a web browser.

What is transpilation?

Transpilation of code is the idea of taking code written in one programming language and converting it into code written in another programming language. An example that you may have come across is TypeScript, which transpiles into JavaScript. This is done because web browsers...