Tyler Slater

We engineers tend to overcomplicate things. Integrations are some of the worst culprits. Start as small and simple as possible. Spend more time planning and you'll likely have a smoother time and can find ways to cut scope while leaving value intact.

You might want to think past mobile. What is the next big platform? I know the founder of an app called Scan. Before the default camera apps could build QR code scanners, he built a beautiful QR code scanning app. It sold for $50M to Snap. That wouldn't happen today. New platforms mean new opportunities and new money for a short window. You might take a bet on VR or AI. You could lose or win big. Mobile will also die some day. How far are we? No one really can predict the future, but realize that every skill you learn, job you take, or platform skills you invest in is a bet that can either pay off handsomely, or leave you with regret. Don't change your mind too often, but stay flexible and aware.

Don't forget hiring. If your app scales, what technical decisions will impact hiring? What is the salary of a Kotlin, Swift, JS, or Dart developer for Android, iOS, ReactNative, or Flutter app?

ReactNative will likely be the cheapest. Then Flutter. Then building for Android and iOS natively and separately. The advantage of hybrid is that you can always include native code for parts of the app that are super complex or need more performance. You're not stuck with the decision.

Consider hybrid platforms that give you both Android and iOS at the same time! Flutter and React Native are the most popular. React Native is the easiest to learn if you have web skills already. If you don't, the skills you learn are the most transferrable to web. In many cases, the code is reusable on web as well!

Resources are important, but you also should focus on application. Take what you learn and apply it in a project. Do your own small project that relates to what you learn. Apply it!!