Businesses and consumers today can hardly imagine a world without mobile apps. Although apps started to become central to commerce long before 2020, it took a pandemic for businesses to speed up adoption. For app developers, pandemic-spurred trends brought challenges and opportunities at the same time. With demands for iOS and Android app development surging, calls for innovation, too, have become louder. But thanks to app development technologies that make things less challenging.
As most of you already know, technology plays the most crucial role in making the development process reliable. From creating the app’s UI to integrating functionalities and ensuring security, everything depends on what platforms you use. And how efficiently you can make those frameworks work for your project. Whether it’s native Android app development or hybrid apps, your project is as good as the tools and frameworks.
Technology Stack for Android App Development
For Android app development, you need to rely on a set of coding languages, tools, and libraries.
Android Development Programming Languages
Java
Java is a general-purpose and object-oriented language. Using this virtually unmatched framework, you can build web, mobile, enterprise software applications. Java enables you to create feature-rich enterprise-grade mobile apps. It offers compatibility with a diverse range of tools and technologies. That is why Java remains a popular Android app development language for such a long time. Java code not just makes programming easier but also drives innovation.
Kotlin
Kotlin is a statically typed, general-purpose language. It’s compatible with Java Virtual Machine and JavaScript. Kotlin offers an extensive range of capabilities that support Java interoperability. With Kotlin app development services, you can dramatically improve the development speed and code quality. And that’s not all. Kotlin also improves your coding experience, making things more seamless. Mixed-language projects for app development are one of Kotlin’s key areas of focus.
Android Studio & Other Tools
Android Studio “provides the fastest tools for building apps on every type of Android device.” It offers a comprehensive range of features, including a visual layout editor, an APK analyzer, and an intelligent code editor, among others. In addition to the Studio, you also need to use various libraries, including dependency injection libraries, networking libraries, and database management libraries.
Technology Stack for iOS App Development
iOS App Development Languages
Swift
Swift is a coding language for iOS app development, along with apps for macOS and watchOS. Apple developed Swift as a rapid, type-safe, and dynamic coding language. One of the most striking features of this language is that it constantly evolves with changing trends and demands. Swift provides app developers with efficient tools, extensive documentation, and a global developers’ community. Swift is easy to learn and makes coding comparatively more interactive.
Objective-C
Objective-C is “a superset of the C programming language and provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime.” It provides dynamic typing and binding while offering language-level support for object graph management. In Objective-C, collections are typed using generics and the framework manages memory automatically.
Xcode and other iOS Development Tools
Xcode is an IDE for developing iOS apps. It provides a unified workflow for UI design, programming, testing, and debugging. Combined with the Swift coding language, the Xcode IDE makes iOS app development seamless and fun. The latest version, Xcode 12, offers a plethora of new capabilities, including streamlined code completion, customizable fonts, and a new document tab model.
Technology Stack for Cross-platform Apps
React Native
React Native is one of the most widely used platforms for hybrid app development services of all kinds. It combines the best elements of native development with React, a JavaScript library for building UIs. React Native allows you to edit images and videos for apps, which is a striking feature. Using React Native, developers can build platform-specific versions of components using a common code.
Flutter
Flutter allows you to make apps that run seamlessly on Android, iOS, and the web. It’s an open-source framework that uses a single code base written in the Dart language. Flutter bears similarities with React Native. You can build highly customized cross-platform apps by choosing Flutter app development services per your needs. It has an expressive and flexible UI that makes it a popular framework among Android developers.
Ionic
Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit for building high-performance cross-platform apps. It lets you build faster using a single codebase for every platform, including Android, iOS, and the web. Ionic helps you use native capabilities HTML 5, CSS, and JavaScript, among others. The Ionic UI toolkit focuses on the look and UI interaction of your app. Besides, Ionic offers a library of mobile-optimized UI components, gestures, and tools that make your app more interactive.
Wrapping Up
Most developers agree that the need for building faster and better will stay here even after the pandemic. That means as an app artisan, you need to level up your skills and adopt the best tools and technologies. Only a set of proven tools and methods help you achieve the desired speed and quality. At Android Developer, we only use the most evolved tools to build performance-focused apps for clients. You could hire Android app developers from us to take your enterprise to new levels of digitization.
FAQs
Q. How much does it cost to build an Android app?
The development cost for an Android app development depends on what kind of app you need. Costs are lower for an app with a basic design and simpler features. If you need a high-performance app with more advanced features, the cost will be comparatively higher. We offer competitive pricing for every kind of app.
Q. What is Flutter for mobile app development?
Flutter is an open-source software development kit created by Google. Flutter is used to develop apps for operating systems including Android, iOS, and Mac. Flutter is user-friendly and easy to learn.
Q. What is Rapid Application Development used for?
Rapid application development (RAD) is a concept of software development that emphasizes working on software and being more adaptive. This development concept, introduced by James Martin in the 1980s, focuses on speed and used strategies such as prototyping, iterative development, and time boxing.