Should You Learn iOS Or Android Development?

If you want to learn mobile development, you should specialise in one platform. But which platform should you choose?

Developing for Android and iOS

Let’s face it: In the meantime the general principles of developing for Android and iOS are very similar. Of course, there are different programming languages and frameworks. But even though I’m a huge iOS fan, there is no objective reason why you should favor one of the platforms over the other from a technical point of view. If you want to learn more about the differences of developing for Android and iOS, take a look at one of my previous blog posts.

The future of the platforms

There is a lot of talk going on about the future of the platforms. At the moment, iOS and Android are the dominant operating systems in that area. But what will happen in the future? Some people believe that the future will favour Android, but I think that such a prediction cannot be made. In fact, the most likely prediction is that both operating systems will stay. If you are looking at the history of operating systems, you can see that the distribution of operating systems is very stable over a long period of time. Windows is the the best example. There are both people who prefer iOS and people who prefer Android. And I don’t know why this should change in the future. Most of the important apps are available on both systems, so that there is no need to switch the platform.

Which one to choose?

So, which platform should you choose? The answer is very easy: Choose the platform you like the most. It’s a very long and exhausting way to become really good in developing for one of these platforms. You have to learn a lot and you should never stop learning because there’s such a high innovation rate. All this is not possible if you are not completely motivated. Nevertheless it’s always good idea to look into other platforms as well.

References

Title Image: @ igor.stevanovic / shutterstock.com