Cross platform development

Cross-platform-development.md

Cross platform development

A non exaustive comparison of todays alternatives (Feb-2019). I followed this steps:

1. List the competitors
2. Exclude obvious bad choices
3. Define comparison parameters
4. Create a comparison matrix
5. Define most important parameters
6. Final result

TLDR;

	Xamarin	Flutter	React Native
Supported Platforms	IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows	IOS, Android	IOS, Android, Web APPs
Language	C#	Dart	Javascript
Hot Reload	NO	YES	YES
Architecture Patterns	MVC, MVVM	MVP, MVC, MVI, MVVM, Redux	MVP, MVC, MVVM,
Performance	4/10	9/10	6/10
Libraries / Tooling	6/10	5/10	7/10
Third-party support	6/10	5/10	7/10
Documentation	10/10	10/10	10/10
Community	7/10	8/10	9/10
Maturity	10/10	5/10	9/10
UI	4/10	8/10	7/10
Code Reuse	96%	70%	70%
Security	x/10	x/10	x/10

The competition

At this time we are considering the following contenders:

1. React Native
2. Flutter
3. Xamarin
4. Phonegap
5. Cordova
6. Ionic
7. Kotlin/Native

Obvious bad choices

We don't want hybrid experiences since the performance hit is too big. The advantages of re-using web developers and web componentes, in our case, do not outweight the performance hit and UI clutterness.

This removes imediatelly Phonegap, Cordova and Ionic from our study.

Kotlin/Native is a great promissing cross platform framework. It does deliver on the multiplatform promisse, we can share all business logic among IOS/Android or Back/Front web. It does not handle UI and, for the best of my knowledge, can't share much code between web and native platforms. Also, it is still hard to find Kotlin developers and partners offering professional Kotlin services. This also removes Kotlin from this study, but it will definetely be considered in future looks to the landscape.

Comparison parameters

1. Supported Platforms
2. Language
3. Hot Reload
4. Architecture Patterns
5. Performance
6. Libraries / Tooling
7. Third-party support
8. Documentation
9. Community
10. Maturity
11. UI
12. Code Reuse
13. Security