I believe in hybrid mobile apps

But not if you have the budget to go native

When talking about hybrid applications most developers think of slow and large sized apps. They are right, but the gap between native apps and hybrid apps is thinner than it was 5 years ago.

In September 2012 Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook’s biggest mistake as a company was betting on HTML5 for mobile applications. Hearing this from a big company like Facebook is very discouraging for mobile developers looking to build their fresh new apps in a hybrid HTML framework.
But should they?

Let’s keep in mind that the statement was made almost 4 years ago at the time of writing this. Meanwhile the struggle to keep up with today’s large list of mobile devices and operating systems only became bigger.

Over the past five years I’ve seen a lot of improvements to hybrid frameworks and cross platform solutions such as Google’s new FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) that made me wonder why I am still spending time building native apps as a student.

The answer is simple. As a student creating a simple app or a startup, hoping to realize their idea as soon as possible IT IS stupid to create native apps.

If you are as big as Facebook and you have the budget, then why not. But for simple apps like something for your local grocery store, or a startup that is struggling to get something ready to show their investors, it is probably the best decision you can make.

Three years ago I made my first hybrid application with Angular 1. It was easy for me to create, but very hard to debug. Now three years later I am starting to see more tools and more frameworks such as Angular 2, making it way wayyy easier for developers to debug their code.

It is understandable that big companies like Facebook and LinkedIn decide to move away from hybrid applications. But as a startup or small company wishing to jump on the mobile hype train, it is stupid to spend time and money on something that may need drastic changes in the near future.