Current state of mobile application development
Web domain has been at the center stage for the programming world for quite some time now, but the latest buzz is Smart Phone Mobile Apps Development. Currently, the market is dominated by – iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian, few of the leading smart phone providers. The common trend amongst all of these is that each of the smart phone providers has its own programming model, environment, conventions and terminologies. This leads to the extreme diversification. Even though the programming model has been left open for open source development, it is still highly controlled by the owners.
What does the industry need?
The Smart Phone Mobile Application Development domain is progressing very rapidly yet the only challenge is the lack of a common programming model that would be supported by majority of the smart phones. Sounds like a distant dream yet if achieved it would enhance the productivity by leaps and bounds. The ray of hope emerges from the success stories of web programming through scripting languages, I can see great potential in scripting languages which can offer elegant solutions in mobile application development, there is blurred line of difference between the both, web and mobile domain, yet they withhold their own, requirement and application specific behavior and approach.
Emergence of scripting language in brief:
To understand the similarities between web and proposed mobile domain scripting languages better, let’s rewind a bit, in the 90’s programmers used to strongly support the type defined languages like C, C++ and JAVA. The programming needs changed with the sophistication of web leading to the emergence of scripting languages, with the popular names being PHP and RoR. The adaptability of the scripting languages to various application development needs was observed to be higher, and so was the productivity due to most of these being an open source. Hence in no time these languages became very popular and widely used.
Will scripting language repeat its success in Mobile Apps development?
The scripting languages are widely known amongst the developer communities as it is easy to support diverse application domains and provides rapid application development. I strongly believe that the scripting languages are the answer to the major roadblock of lack of common programming model in the Smart phone industry. Scripting languages, according to me, are the ultimate solution in dealing with the diversity in Smart Phone Mobile Application Development.