20 Oct 2019
Mobile applications development is one of the emerging technologies in the IT industry. And with this the demand for app developers is growing more than ever. With the latest trend of wearables and IoT-enabled devices, app development is becoming increasingly popular. The skills required and development tools are also changing at the same rate.
As a Mobile App developer, you could be overlooking various stages of the app development. Ranging from designing the app views to finally submitting the apps to the App Stores. The complexity and features of the apps decide the amount of development and number of developers required to build.
Mobile development can be broadly classified into two, Native and Cross Platform(Hybrid) development. In Native app development, apps are built in the language and frameworks specific to only that platform. On the other hand, Cross platform dev involves building on a single platform and publishing it for all mobile platforms.
If you are a native developer then you will have to learn the languages based on the different platforms. Hybrid apps save dev time, build on one and publish it on all platforms. e.g native iOS apps would require you to program in swift. Google’s Flutter, Microsoft’s Xamarin are examples of cross platform technologies.
Although mobile apps development has started only 12 years ago, the growth of app developer community and the development tools has been substantial and so is the training.
Many universities now offer dedicated App development courses and degrees. However a computer science degree should be enough to get into this field. There are also many internships, apprenticeships available for mobile app developers, many of which would provide training on the job for qualifications
iOS Developer (iPhone & iPad apps development) - Swift is recommended language for iOS Apps. Few years ago, Objective-C was the go to language but apple have stopped supporting it.
Android Apps Developer - Android apps can be developed using Java. Large parts of Android are written in Java and its APIs are designed to be called primarily from Java. It is possible to develop C and C++ app using the Android Native Development Kit (NDK). Also there is a new kid on the block called Kotlin, it is used for android development and also to build applications for other platforms. Read here for more https://kotlinlang.org/
If you are already a developer and prefer C# language then Xamarin by Microsoft is one of the best available options for you to develop mobile apps for all platforms in C#. You would still need to understand the apps lifecycle and their working on their respective native platforms.
Flutter on the other hand is from Google, it is another cross platform language with good developer support. It uses Dart as the programming language. There are plenty of sample projects and production apps already using this to publish apps on multiple platforms.
If you a front-end mobile application developer and prefer Javascript. Then latest frameworks in JavaScript such as Angular and React Native are your tools for mobile applications development. In fact, React Native focuses on “Learn once, write anywhere” strategy which makes the cross-platform app development much simpler.
Alot of apps will require to integrate with the apis at some point or another. To use 3rd party services in your app, you will need to understand the REST Apis and would need to work with them. So some development experience in programming apis and integrating with apis would be desirable quality for a mobile App Developer.
To conclude, Mobile Apps Development has a promising future and a lot of scope. With technological innovations, you will be on the forefront of improving the lives of the people. We here at GlobalTechnologyJobs wish you all the best for your career as a Mobile Apps Developer.
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