Brian McBride
Jul 27, 2017 · 1 min read

Let’s go and pull out all the assembly developers out of retirement and ask them to rehash their arguments how compiled languages could never be as optimized and as fast as writing in direct assembly.

Progressive web apps, if supported everywhere, could work great in a HUGE number of app instances. These days a well coded web app is performant. I’m not sure I’d make games using web apps, but sooooo many apps are just forms and simple displays of data that are more than ok in a web app.

More importantly, the steps to get an app on the phone is a loss in user base. Go to store, install app, find app in phone, run app. At least 4 steps FROM your website where they could be running the web app in the first place. Each step, statistically, you loose 20% of your audience. That’s a loss of around 4 of 10 people who want to use your app.

So, do you retain all 10 people with a great progressive web app or do you throw away almost half your users forcing them to download, install and run your native app. If you are Uber, sure. If you’re a scrappy startup… users are the juice.

    Brian McBride

    Written by

    Entrepreneur & Director focused around software engineering. “Let’s make great apps together!”