Native Development Without Double Cost

A talk I presented at the Mobile DevOps Summit 22. In this talk I show ways to optimize native development to ensure that developing an app for the iOS and Android platforms natively doesn't mean that you have double the cost.

Transcript

1. Mobile DevOps Summit 2022
   Native development
   
   
   without double cost
   

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2. About me
   2
   ‣Founder / CEO at Egeniq
   
   
   ‣ Solution architect
   
   
   ‣Media apps
   
   
   ‣Dutch COVID-19 apps
   
   
   ‣Organizer of Appdevcon
   

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3. Native vs Cross Platform
   

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4. Native vs Cross Platform - Benefits
   ‣Native benefits
   
   
   ‣How the platform vendors intended it
   
   
   ‣Direct integration of device features
   
   
   ‣An Android UI that Android users expect
   
   
   ‣An iOS UI that iOS users expect
   
   
   ‣Best performance
   
   
   ‣No leaky abstractions
   
   
   ‣Small binaries
   
   
   ‣Large development ecosystem
   
   
   ‣Long term support
   4
   ‣Cross platform benefits
   
   
   ‣One codebase to rule them all
   
   
   ‣Common abstraction of device features
   
   
   ‣The same UI on all platforms
   
   
   ‣(Unless you spend additional time)
   
   
   ‣Not limited to iOS/Android
   
   
   ‣e.g. Flutter on web
   

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5. Native vs Cross Platform - Drawbacks
   ‣Native drawbacks
   
   
   ‣2 codebases to maintain
   
   
   ‣Needs separate testing for Android and
   iOS
   5
   ‣Cross-platform drawbacks
   
   
   ‣3 stacks to master
   
   
   ‣Needs separate testing for Android and
   iOS
   
   
   ‣The same UI on all platforms
   
   
   ‣Feels ‘off’ to experienced users
   
   
   ‣Performance
   
   
   ‣Lack of longevity
   
   
   ‣Cordova now considered ‘legacy’
   
   
   ‣ReactNative losing ground to Flutter
   
   
   ‣Reduced older OS version support
   

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6. Seeking best of both worlds
   Can we harness the benefits of native, while gaining
   some of the benefits that cross-platform offers?
   6
   

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7. What we want to avoid
   7
   iOS
   Android
   1
   1
   +
   2
   Architecture Development Testing
   

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8. Shared Architecture
   

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9. Android and iOS development paradigms are converging
   9
   Java
   Objective-C
   Years ago….
   

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10. Android and iOS development paradigms are converging
    10
    Java
    Objective-C
    Kotlin
    Swift
    Coroutines
    Async/await
    Compose
    SwiftUI
    MVVM
    

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11. Shared Architecture Approach
    ‣Shared Architecture Approach:
    
    
    ‣An iOS and Android engineer cooperate on the technical design:
    
    
    ‣One datamodel for Android and iOS
    
    
    ‣One definition of business logic
    
    
    ‣One approach for backend integration
    11
    

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12. Shared Architecture Approach
    12
    Conceptual
    Data Model
    Model layer
    ViewModel
    layer
    View layer
    

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13. Shared Architecture Approach
    13
    Conceptual
    iOS Android
    Data Model
    Model layer
    ViewModel
    layer
    View layer Compose Views
    SwiftUI Views
    ViewModel
    ViewModel
    Repositories /
    Models
    Repositories /
    Data Classes
    Core Data /
    SQLite
    Room /
    

    SQLite
    

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14. Impact on project
    14
    iOS
    Android
    0.70
    0.70
    +
    1.7
    Architecture Development Testing
    Shared 0.30
    

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15. Asynchronous Development
    

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16. What is asynchronous development?
    16
    iOS
    Android
    Develo
    p
    
    feature A
    Develo
    p
    
    feature B
    

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17. What is asynchronous development?
    17
    iOS
    Android
    Develo
    p
    
    feature A
    Develo
    p
    
    feature B
    Port
    
    
    feature A
    Port
    
    
    Feature B
    

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18. Impact on project
    18
    iOS
    Android
    0.65
    0.65
    +
    1.5
    Architecture Development Testing
    Shared 0.20
    feature A
    feature B
    feature C
    feature D
    port A
    port B
    port C
    port D
    

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19. Shared Core
    

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20. Shared Core Approach
    20
    iOS Android
    Layouts
    /
    
    Views
    Xibs /
    ViewControllers
    ViewModel
    ViewModel
    Repositories /
    Data Classes
    Storage
    { }
    Swift Kotlin
    {
    Some shared language
    

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21. Shared Core Approach
    21
    iOS Android
    Layouts
    /
    
    Views
    Xibs /
    ViewControllers
    ViewModel
    ViewModel
    Repositories /
    Data Classes
    Storage
    { }
    Swift Kotlin
    {
    Some shared language
    Device features
    Device features
    {
    Swift
    }Kotlin
    

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22. Options for shared cores
    ‣Shared core could be written in:
    
    
    ‣Kotlin Multiplatform
    
    
    ‣C / C++
    
    
    ‣Go
    
    
    ‣Rust
    
    
    ‣…
    22
    

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23. Shared Core - Kotlin Multiplatform
    23
    Kotlin Multiplatform:
    
    
    ‣No need to add a 3d stack
    
    
    ‣Development could be handled by the Android devs
    
    
    ‣Is specifically created for the ‘shared core’ use case
    

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24. Shared Core - Others
    24
    C / C++
    
    
    ‣ 3 stacks to master
    
    
    ‣ Relatively complex
    
    
    ‣ Very performant
    
    
    ‣ Small footprint
    
    
    ‣ Tough to find devs
    Go
    
    
    ‣ 3 stacks to master
    
    
    ‣ Bigger binaries
    
    
    ‣ Popular language
    
    
    ‣ Good performance
    
    
    ‣ Easy to learn
    
    
    Rust
    
    
    ‣ 3 stacks to master
    
    
    ‣ Good performance
    
    
    ‣ Suitable for backends too
    
    
    ‣ Tough to find devs
    

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25. Impact on project
    25
    iOS
    Android
    0.4
    0.4
    +
    1.4
    Architecture Development Testing
    Shared 0.6
    

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26. Combine all the things!
    

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27. Impact on project - all 3 optimisations combined
    27
    iOS
    Android
    0.30
    0.30
    +
    1.2 ?
    Architecture Development Testing
    Shared 0.60
    feature A
    feature B
    feature C
    feature D
    port A
    port B
    port C
    port D
    

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28. Learnings
    1.2 is a bit ambitious
    
    
    ‣Methods aren’t fully complementary but overlap
    
    
    ‣If shared core pushes the native code mostly to the UI, then
    the porting effect of async development is damped a bit
    
    
    In our experience a 1.3-1.6 factor is definitely feasible!
    28
    

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29. Other Considerations
    

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30. Other Considerations: a project is more than app development
    ‣Consider the total size of a project:
    
    
    ‣4 person project + separate iOS / Android devs = meh.
    
    
    ‣Additional cost factor of doing native (without the optimisations in this talk) = ~ 2
    
    
    ‣60 person project + small number of programmers , doing +2 devs to be able to
    remain native = sure, why not.
    
    
    ‣Additional cost factor of doing native (again without optimisations) = ~ 1.03
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31. Other Considerations: skills gap
    ‣The cost of native vs cross platform is also determined by:
    
    
    ‣Existing skills in team
    
    
    ‣E.g. a team coming from web development will be faster in React Native
    
    
    ‣Nature of the project
    
    
    ‣A throw-away… marketing… ui-only project will benefit more from cross platform
    
    
    ‣A strategic app with years of support will benefit more from native
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32. The Future
    We do research into optimised native development:
    32
    We will continue to share our findings /learnings
    

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33. Thank you! Questions?
    ivo@egeniq.com
    Ivo Jansch
    @ijansch
    

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