Why I gave up on being a Mobile Developer (opens in new tab)

Title is incorrect should be: “Why I gave up on being an Android developer”

The iOS development ecosystem is much more pleasurable to work in. I’ve had almost a decade of experience building BOTH native iOS and Android apps and the issues OP mentioned are all workable.

Mobile is here to stay :) and will be for the foreseeable long term, most of internet and web traffic is now routed through mobile devices, and building native experiences will always trump a web based one on mobile.

Those technical problems can be overcome. It is no fun, a waste of time and frustrating. The real shitshow starts when your app is in the play store and you try to find users. Or when Google makes some changes that completely invalidate your app idea or force you to change your complete app.

I just had the maintenance of an Android app dumped in my lap, and I’m dreading it. I have a decent amount of experience with iOS development and have been pretty impressed.

But everyone characterizes Android as a shítshow. As a consumer, Android’s profound problems are evident from the fact that millions of devices are orphaned soon after release, because users must wait for every telco to dribble out a special version of the OS for every device, one at a time.

WTF? This is a 21st-century OS?

> If I absolutely had to create a mobile app, I would still choose Flutter, even if I only targeted Android. Working with the Android SDK is out of the question for me.

This is the same conclusion and advice I give with the caveat that you don't need a specific capabilities that are not yet available in Flutter/Dart. e.g. video recording/playback is/was one such lacking area.