This article is first published in wechat public number [fast application development circle], like friends scan the bottom of the article two-dimensional code to pay attention to it!
On March 20, China’s 10 leading mobile phone manufacturers held a “fast app” ecosystem conference in Beijing, setting standards for fast app development and jointly creating a new ecosystem of mobile apps, mainly to counter the rapid expansion of wechat mini programs.
The positioning of “Fast Application” and wechat small program are similar, and the way of technical implementation is also similar. They are both developed by using front-end technology stack, and through Android native rendering, they have found a near perfect balance between development efficiency and operation efficiency. And users don’t need to download the APK package, so they can enjoy the performance experience of native apps right away.
After seeing this news, Xiao Yuan felt that the winter of Android programmers is coming! Since wechat launched small programs, the market share of native Android development has been continuously eroded, and now the top 10 mobile phone manufacturers have jointly launched “fast apps”, which is even worse for native Android development!
May do Android native development partners will feel small yuan is alarmist, the trifling small program and fast application want to let most of our native development are unemployed, is simply overreach, we use native technology developed App, performance can beat them several streets!
Next small yuan say oneself viewpoint, if get wrong, ask everybody big guy people light pat! ^_^
The state of Android native development
First let’s talk about the advantages of native development:
Closer to the bottom, many functions close to the bottom need to be handled by native development, and no matter it is “fast application” or small program, they all run in the App developed by native technology, and ultimately rely on native development to provide the interface of relevant functions.
The operation efficiency is higher. For some complex business scenarios with high performance requirements, the performance advantage of native development will be highlighted. It is difficult for you to write a large game or App with high performance requirements with small programs or fast applications.
Having said the advantages, let’s look at the problems we face:
To quote an anonymous “old driver” on Zhihu:
At present, most of the applications in the market have not reached a high level of performance requirements, and the APPS of BAT giants (wechat, Taobao, QQ, Weibo, Toutiao, etc.) almost monopolize more than 90% of the mobile phone time of every Chinese people. What should the owners of other small apps do? Support three teams IOS, Android, Web and giants battle? Having a team to directly cover the three ends, most apps on the market don’t make much difference whether they are made on the Web or native.
Therefore, in the context that most companies are small applications and small teams, the performance advantages and underlying advantages of Android native development are not well reflected, nor are they the core concerns of the project.
In this era of mobile Internet, people are most concerned about how to develop at low cost and how to quickly trial-and-error. However, the low efficiency of native technology development and the high cost of multi-platform maintenance just run counter to our concerns.
What problems “quick apps” and applets solve
Experience the silky “Quick App”
As we said before, most apps on the market are small applications and small teams with low requirements on performance. For such apps, the development cost of “fast applications” and small programs is lower, the development efficiency is higher, and more energy and resources can be put into the research and development of core businesses to provide users with better services.
Secondly, “fast application” and small program have limitations on the package size, which can be distributed more quickly. It can be used at a point, without having to go through a long process of download and installation like App. The user experience of App will kill several streets in seconds.
Future trends in mobile development technology
Sun Yat-sen said many years ago, “The general trend of the world is mighty and mighty. When it goes forward, it will prosper, and when it goes against it, it will perish.” That is to say, no matter how strong you are, trying to fight against the trend is nothing but a slap against a stone, which is the power of the trend.
In terms of technology trends, Cordova, PWA, RN/Weex are all developing in the direction of low cost and high development efficiency. Therefore, Xiaoyuan believes that the use of Web front-end technology to replace native App development will be the mainstream trend, this is no doubt!
And “fast application” and small program in addition to meet the requirements mentioned above, but also has the advantages of lightweight, easy to distribute quickly, which is the above several technologies do not have, is in line with the future trend of technology development!
“Quick application” PK small program, who will be the winner
Relying on wechat’s 1 billion user base, small programs began to make a real push in the second half of last year. In only half a year, it has caused panic among the top 10 mobile phone manufacturers, and they have to offer quick apps to compete for control of app distribution. It seems that small programs are gaining momentum and are unstoppable.
But Xiaoyuan is more optimistic about “fast application”, first of all, the top 10 mobile phone manufacturers almost occupy more than 90% of the domestic application market, which can fully represent the domestic Android share. Secondly, both small programs and wechat eventually run in the Android system, and the control of the system is in the hands of the mobile phone manufacturers, so they have the ability to block the development of small programs from the system level and reduce the convenience of using small programs (such as prohibiting small programs to create shortcuts on the desktop).
The way out for Android programmers
With the future of Android native development so bleak, where do you go from here? Xiaoyuan gave the following directions, only for your reference:
More in-depth study of Android technology, to the more low-level direction of research, to do those performance requirements of the application, or enter the BAT and other giants, after all, Web development technology can not completely replace the native development technology.
Master the second skills, this choice is more, such as to do Java backend development, although Java backend engineers are super super, but the demand is still very large. Or learn Python, which has become so popular that it can plug in everything from artificial intelligence to big data to blockchain.
Finally, xiaoyuan is most optimistic about a way, is to learn Web front-end development, join the “fast application” development ranks. Think about it really some small excitement! As if to see a bright future, in the near future can serve as CEO, marry Bai Fumei, onto the peak of life!
This article represents the individual viewpoint of small yuan only! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. If you like this post, please give it a thumbs up! Thank you very much! ^_^
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