Recommendation for RAD cross-platform development

Question

I've some experience in Windows and Linux programming for desktop software and now I'm planning to start developing for Android/iOS.

As far as I know paradigm for applications is quite different in mobile devices compared to desktop application, and I need to get something done quickly, so I would need some recommendations based on the following:

• short learning curve
• cross-platform
• low package size (no images or videos will be embedded)
• I need to connect to USB ports/FTDI, through virtual comm port (OTG)
• avoid complex external dependencies like installing a framework, etc.
• free or very affordable (non-profit project)
• offline IDE/platform

I've background in C, C++, C#, VB, PHP, Javascript, HTML and CSS.

I've found different solutions like Xamarin but I'm not sure this is that simple. I've also checked other suggestions like those based in HTML-CSS-Javascript, but I'm not sure how this works? Is this a website using any kind of JS SDK able to access to phone features and then embedded in an App containing a web browser?

I've checked other questions in StackOverflow, but many of them are old.

Any suggestion or help will be much appreciated

Answer 1

Since you have mentioned HTML, CSS and Javascript experience and you 'need to get something done quickly', I would suggest you look into React native, that would allow you to build native apps with the same code base (mostly). React native compiles into native code for each platform.

https://facebook.github.io/react-native/

If you are looking for a shorter learning curve you can look at developing apps using Cordova but it is an older technology. With Cordova, you are essentially developing web pages that will be displayed on the native web viewing components (UIWebview in iOS, WebView in Android). There are pluggins available for most common functionality such as camera access.

https://cordova.apache.org/

Instead of using Cordova directly, you can also use a framework such as Ionic that takes care of providing a native look for your UI on each platform (web, desktop and mobile).

https://ionicframework.com/