What programming languages are used in mobile development?

Programming languages for mobile application development

For smartphones and tablets, mobile development has become a major catalyst for digital transformation, providing us with countless applications that simplify our daily lives.

However, few people think about how these innovative programs that can transform our devices into powerful tools are created.

This is where mobile app programming languages, which are the foundation for mobile app development, come into the picture.

Java: the foundation stone of Android development

Java remains the fundamental programming language for Android applications, playing a key role in the world of mobile development.

In this section, we take a look at why Java is so widely used to create applications for the Android operating system and what benefits the language offers.

History and reliability of Java in Android:

• From the first versions of Android to modern releases, Java has served as the primary application development language for this platform.
• The reliability and stability of Java contributes to the creation of quality and productive applications.

Extensive community and resources:

• A huge community of developers whose experience and expertise can be easily utilized.
• Many libraries, frameworks and resources developed for Android in Java.

Code portability:

• The benefits of "Write Once, Run Anywhere" - writing code once and running it on different devices.
• Ability to use the same code on other platforms, making multi-platform development easier.

Integration with the Android ecosystem:

• Native support for the Android API, providing full access to device functionality.
• Interoperability with Android Studio, the official integrated development environment for Android.

Evolution: Java 8 and above:

• Introducing new Java features, such as lambda expressions and threads, to improve performance and ease of development.
• Compatibility with later versions of Java to utilize new language features.
  
  

Interesting fact: Java was developed in 1991 as a language for programming consumer electronic devices, but was later refocused on developing Internet applications.

Swift: iOS ecosystem and developer perspectives

Swift is an integral part of mobile development, providing Apple developers with unprecedented opportunities to create innovative and high-performance apps for iOS and macOS.

In this section, we take a look at how Swift formalizes the iOS ecosystem and what perspectives it provides for developers.

Speed and performance:

• Swift is designed with a focus on maximizing performance, which ensures fast code execution.
• The use of modern technology allows you to create apps that run smoothly and responsively.

Code security and cleanliness:

• Swift's core principle is to create safe code, which reduces errors and simplifies debugging.
• Clean and concise syntax makes code more readable and maintainable.

Integration with iOS ecosystem:

• Native support for iOS APIs and libraries provides full access to the capabilities of Apple devices.
• Integration with Xcode, the official development environment for iOS, makes it easy to create, test, and debug apps.

Backward compatibility:

• Swift's continuous updates provide backward compatibility with previous versions of the language.
• Developers can use new language features without worrying about losing compatibility with older versions.

Community and Development:

• An active community of Swift developers who share expertise and resources.
• Participate in shaping the language through open source development on the Swift Evolution platform.

Interesting fact: Swift was declared an open source project in 2015, allowing developers to actively participate in its development.

Kotlin: the rise of Android development

Kotlin is gaining more and more popularity every year. It is a key programming language for mobile devices and a tool for Android development.

In this section, we take a look at why Kotlin is so attractive to developers, how it has taken off in the Android world, and what benefits it provides.

Compatibility with Java

• Kotlin offers full compatibility with the Java programming language, providing a seamless transition between the two languages.
• The ability to utilize Java libraries and frameworks makes it much easier to integrate existing code.

Concise and readable code

• Kotlin syntax is more compact and expressive than Java, resulting in a smaller code size.
• The increased readability contributes to more efficient application maintenance and upgrades.

Java code example

package com.example.mykotlinapp;

import android.os.Bundle;
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }
}

Android Studio will offer an automatic conversion to Kotlin, and the code will look something like this:

Example Kotlin code

package com.example.mykotlinapp

import android.os.Bundle
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
    }
}

Safety and null hazards:

• Kotlin offers safer typing and null-value checking, which helps prevent many common programming errors. (This means that, for example, if you declare a variable as a string, you can't accidentally assign it a value of a different type, such as a number. This helps avoid errors due to unexpected changes in data types, and Kotlin also explicitly states whether a variable can contain the value null. If a variable is not declared as nullable, Kotlin will not allow it to be assigned a value of null. This prevents errors associated with trying to use a null value where it shouldn't be)
• An improved type system contributes to code reliability.

Coroutines for asynchrony

• Kotlin's built-in support for coroutines makes asynchronous programming easier by providing more efficient execution flow management.(In simple words, Kotlin's built-in support for coroutines makes asynchronous programming (working with tasks that run in parallel or asynchronously) easier and more efficient. This means that managing threads of execution in code becomes more convenient and flexible. Instead of creating many separate threads or using complex constructs to handle asynchronous tasks, coroutines allow asynchronous code to be organized in a more readable and natural way)
• This contributes to improved application performance and responsiveness.

Support in Android Studio

• The official Kotlin integration in Android Studio provides a user-friendly development environment and automatic code conversion capabilities.
• This simplifies the Android app development process.

Active community and development

• A growing community of Kotlin developers actively share experiences and create resources, which contributes to the development of the language.
• Regular updates and development of Kotlin are focused on meeting the needs of developers and ensuring the relevance of the language in a dynamic programming environment.

     ●  Official Kotlin Slack channel: Slack Kotlinlang
     ●  Kotlin Forum on Stack Overflow: Stack Overflow Kotlin
     ●  Official Kotlin site with a community section: Kotlin Community
     ●  GitHub Kotlin Organization: GitHub Kotlin

Interesting fact: In 2017, Google announced Kotlin as the official programming language for Android, which attracted attention and support from developers.

Guides to the world of algorithms, we are waiting for your little explorers on the course "Mobile Game Development on Android" at CODDY! Let's create the future together with code.

JavaScript in mobile development: React Native and NativeScript

JavaScript, originally designed for web development, has entered the mobile development world thanks to technologies such as React Native and NativeScript.

In this section, we'll look at how JavaScript has become a transitional bridge between the web and mobile worlds, and what opportunities React Native and NativeScript provide.

The growing demand for mobile applications is driving the emergence of new tools, frameworks, and libraries designed to accelerate the pace of application development.

NativeScript

The NativeScript platform is an open source framework for developing native mobile applications.

• It uses the JavaScript, Angular, VueJS, and TypeScript programming languages as the foundation for building native mobile apps.
  
  
• Developers can utilize their existing web development skills such as CSS, Angular, and VueJS to create cross-platform native apps for Android and iOS.

React Native

React Native, introduced by Facebook in 2015, is a component-based UI development environment.

• This framework is an extension of ReactJS (a JavaScript library for creating UI components for web applications) and is popular for its use of a declarative programming language, a virtual DOM model, and reusable components to build the application interface.

What do NativeScript and React Native have in common?

Although both platforms utilize web skills to develop mobile apps (JavaScript, Angular, VueJS, ReactJS), both provide a native user interface without the use of web views.

This ensures that mobile apps have an interface that is device and screen specific.

Cross-platform development

• Both React Native and NativeScript allow cross-platform native apps, which means you can use the same codebase to develop Android and iOS apps. In addition, both platforms support API sharing in addition to codebase logic.
  
  
• Both platforms, Facebook's React Native and Apache's NativeScript, are open source and therefore completely free to use.

A comparison of NativeScript and React Native:

Advantage #1. The primary development languages for React Native are JavaScript and React. A developer proficient in web development using React can start developing mobile apps using React Native.

• To build mobile apps using NativeScript, the major languages like Angular, VueJS, TypeScript and JavaScript are used.
  
  
• This makes the process of developing mobile apps using NativeScript accessible to web developers. The learning curve for both platforms is about the same.

Winner: Both platforms

Advantage #2. One of the key advantages of React Native is the ability to reuse components.

• In React Native, each component is a part of the user interface and can be used on different screens of the application.
  This greatly speeds up the mobile app development process.
  
  
• With NativeScript, the concept of component reuse is not as explicit, which can lead to longer development times.
  
  
• React Native offers a hot reload feature, which means that the developer does not need to completely recompile the application to review changes after updating the code base.
  This contributes to faster application development.

Winner: React Native

Advantage #3. React Native uses React and JavaScript to create the user interface of an application.

• React uses a virtual DOM, which is a lightweight virtual representation of the DOM in memory.
  
  
• This provides faster updates to UI components and keeps both DOMs synchronized.
  
  
• Since NativeScript apps are built using Angular, VueJS, and JavaScript, their performance is relatively lower compared to apps built using React Native.

Winner: React Native

Interesting fact: JavaScript was originally created to provide interactivity to web pages, but now it is used not only in web development, but also in server-side programming, IoT and many other areas.

C# and Xamarin: cross-platform capabilities

C# and Xamarin represent a powerful alliance, providing developers with cross-platform capabilities for building mobile applications.

In this section, we look at how C# has become a key programming language in the Xamarin world.

Xamarin is an open source platform designed to build modern productivity apps for iOS, Android, and Windows with .NET.

Benefits of using Xamarin for mobile app development:

A single technology stack for development across all platforms

• Xamarin utilizes the C# language and .NET Framework to build apps on a variety of mobile platforms. This allows you to reuse up to 30% of your source code, which speeds up the development process.
• The development environment remains a single stack, which simplifies the process and does not require switching between different environments.

Performance is close to native

• Cross-platform applications created using Xamarin have performance comparable to native Android and iOS apps.
• Xamarin provides performance testing tools such as Xamarin Test Cloud, which allows you to identify issues before the app is released.

Native UI

• Xamarin allows you to create native UIs using platform-dependent UI elements.
• It is recommended to use Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android separately for better results in UI development.

Hardware compatibility

• Through plugins and various APIs, providing access to common device functionality across all platforms.
• The ability to use libraries specific to each platform allows you to customize your app with minimal effort.

Let's look at an example of using plugins and APIs in Kotlin using the Xamarin platform to provide access to shared device functionality across different mobile platforms (Android and iOS).

Note that Xamarin is usually linked to the C# programming language, but we can use Kotlin using Kotlin/Native.

1. Creating a Kotlin-enabled Xamarin project:

• In Visual Studio (or Visual Studio for Mac), create a new Xamarin.Forms project.
• In the project, add a new Kotlin/Native project.
  

2. Adding common code:

• Create common Kotlin code that will be used on both platforms. For an example, let's create a "DeviceFunctionality" class:

// В общем коде (CommonCode.kt)
class DeviceFunctionality {
    fun getDeviceInfo(): String {
        return "Device Model: ${getDeviceModel()}\nOS Version: ${getOSVersion()}"
    }

    private fun getDeviceModel(): String {
        // Логика получения модели устройства
        return "Sample Device Model"
    }

    private fun getOSVersion(): String {
        // Логика получения версии операционной системы
        return "Sample OS Version"
    }
}

3. Using common code in platform code:

• In Android code (using Kotlin):

// В коде для Android (AndroidCode.kt)
fun main() {
    val deviceFunctionality = DeviceFunctionality()
    val deviceInfo = deviceFunctionality.getDeviceInfo()

    // Пример вывода информации в консоль на Android
    println("Android App - Device Info:\n$deviceInfo")
}

In this example, we have created generic Kotlin code that contains a class to handle device functionality.

This code is used in both the Android and iOS app, and still provides access to common device functionality.

In this way, plugins and APIs can be used to provide uniform access to device functionality across platforms.

Open Source technologies with enterprise support

• Following the acquisition of Xamarin by Microsoft, its SDK became open source and available under the MIT license. This provides transparency and an improved environment for developers.
• With support from major companies like Microsoft, Unity, JetBrains, Red Hat, and the .NET Foundation, Xamarin has become a robust technology stack for mobile development.

Easy support

• Being cross-platform makes software support and updates easier.
• Changes to a single source file can be applied to iOS and Android apps, saving time and resources.

Full suite of development tools

• Xamarin comes with a full suite of development tools including its own IDE (Visual Studio), SDK, testing (Xamarin Test Cloud), distribution and analytics (Hockeyapp and Xamarin.Insights).
• This eliminates the need for additional tools and provides everything you need to build, test and deploy Xamarin applications.

Interesting fact: C# was developed by Microsoft and first introduced in 2000. It has become a key development language for many Microsoft platforms.

Dart and Flutter: innovations in design and performance

Dart and Flutter are a dynamic duo, with Dart serving as a programming language and Flutter as a framework for creating colorful and high-performance mobile applications.

In this section, we look at how this combination of innovative technologies has brought a fresh perspective to the world of mobile development.

Dart as a language for client-side development:

• A brief introduction to Dart as a programming language designed specifically for building mobile, web, and desktop applications.
• Advantages of Dart such as high performance and simple syntax.

Flutter is a framework for efficient development

• How Flutter uses Dart to build cross-platform applications with a high level of customization.
• Flexibility in UI creation and instant hot reloading to speed up the development process.

Widget Principles

• How Flutter organizes the user interface through components called widgets.
• The benefits of using widgets to create comprehensive and colorful layouts.

Animations and Aesthetics

• Built-in animation support and Flutter capabilities to create impactful and fluid user interfaces.
• Utilizes Material Design and Cupertino to ensure consistency in design.

Performance and Optimizations

• How Flutter delivers high performance applications by compiling to native code.
• Optimizations for resource management and efficient use of device hardware capabilities.

Web Development with Flutter

• A brief introduction to using Flutter to build web applications.
• Perspectives on web development using Flutter.

Interesting fact: Dart was created by Google in 2011 to create client-side applications, including web and mobile apps, while in Flutter the user interface is built using widgets, which are also used to control logic and interact with interface elements.

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