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Comment by prmph | Hacker News Reader

The shittiness of XCode and just app development in general for iOS, combined the mess that is Android development, is why I just gave up on native app development. I'm now entirely focused on web development and won't invest any time or effort in keeping up with native app development.

It's sad how the concept of native app leads to walled gardens, instead of the web being promoted and improved to be the primary way to deliver apps. And the web need serious and continual efforts to modernize its of development and use experience, but it is far superior model than native apps IMHO.

Since America just won't do it, the EU should force Apple and Google to allow the experience of using mobile web apps to be on par with that of native apps. At the very least, allow a one click way to add a web app to the home screen easily.

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> I'm now entirely focused on web development and won't invest any time or effort in keeping up with native app development.

I can't agree with this more. After having numerous problems with native android development before, I decided to give flutter a go recently for a mobile app idea I've been wanting to do.

After getting byzantine and seemingly unsolvable errors from flutter doctor and gradle for the 3rd time after completely reinstalling it every time, I just gave up and started making an app in tauri instead.

I love the web, I write cross platform mobile apps using web tech (same code as the website) that work 90%+ as well on web vs "native" (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on which features I need). The issue is even less-so with web capabilities (though I absolutely wish more was available) but with customers/client's expectations. I can spend all day telling someone "This website here does everything an app would" and they simply will not care until they see it in the App/Play Store.

I've seen this happen over 10+ external companies that I've worked with. I'll provide a website with the "app" that they can play with and literally 99% of the time they won't even look at it until it's in app form. Same codebase, same UI, same features, it's insane but I've seen it happen enough times to expect it. I think it's partly a prestige thing but whatever the cause, I don't see myself getting away from dealing with Xcode/Android Studio/App Store Connect/Google Play Console. At least Android Studio is built on IntelliJ... and that's about the only nice thing I can say about it (other than thank god it's not eclipse based anymore).

Are you saying these people never use websites for rich functionality, except for accessing brochure-style content?

And Android Studio is even worse (that is weird, the bare IDE is the same as others, but the android apis and tooling overshadow it). And the use of Gradle multiplied it by 1000.

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