Applications as programs operating on data sets have been with humanity for over a century. Having some kind of interface for pure data (primitive) is necessary for the purposes of popularization and elimination of errors. Although you could familiarize the user with data types, ways of entering them into memory, and obtaining the expected results, after some time it turns out that such a process is time-consuming, complicated, chaotic, and above all — not abstract enough for the end user.
The origins
Equipping a user with knowledge about data processing for a given business domain takes too much time, as there are more types of data than the average user can know. They also differ depending on a technology — each requires units of time to learn.
Entering or reading individual data directly is within the average person’s range, but combining data into relationships (relations) or aggregating multiple data into one piece of information is the real value of data operations. They are not always intuitive, and thus easy to perform.
Even a well-built database cannot exclude a subjective interpretation of, for example, a text data. As with differences in the interpretation of a given data, the risk for system coherence is low, any discrepancies in entering individually perceived information into the database cause chaos and inconsistencies.
The least tangible problem of manual database manipulation is the lack of a sort of virtual abstraction for the user. All focus and awareness is oriented on the introduction itself and the reading of certain information, and not how it should be — on performing an imaginary action.
All these problems necessitate the creation of programs for adequate, intuitive, and pleasant data manipulation. Regardless of whether a given activity is completing accounting data, downloading space scans or viewing HTML documents, it should be based on an appropriate application that combines the human intellect with the meticulousness of a machine.
Tendencies
The natural course of things was creating various types of simple programs that allow you to manipulate data locally or on a server. From a purely practical point of view, these applications primarily solved technical problems with minimal consumption of resources (people, money, time).
Along with the increased popularity, products are created with more and more attention to user comfort and experience. Even simple forms can cause a lot of trouble to less initiated people, hence the natural tendency in the industry to empathize — to understand the needs and problems of a person when using a given application.
The product already consists of many analyzes and processes, and the application is the end result of the mental effort of dozens of people involved in software development. The user interface combines the endeavors of business, marketing and designers.
Every year, more and more not only technically perfect, but also well-designed websites, mobile and browser applications, and IoT devices are created. This accelerates the process of digitization, i.e. the adaptation of digital solutions in society.
Until now, however, creating a consistent visual interface for a given product has not been easy due to the need to support multiple operating systems with different approaches to creating GUI components. It often requires duplication of the same graphic design by many teams on several platforms / browsers, which is of course costly and time-consuming.
Seeing these pains, technology companies began to invest their resources in the development of hybrid platforms that allow presenting the same product on multiple platforms with great accuracy.
Future
The hybrid application market is no longer a novelty suffering from childhood age problems, but a well-established technology with known pros and cons. However, despite their universality, hybrid applications cannot be used everywhere.
Most hybrid frameworks focus on drawing or bridging drawing views in applications. This means that we can’t easily use a graphics engine such as OpenGL. It is also very difficult to use typical system functionalities.
When such a low-level implementation is needed, we should consider the use of native technologies. Nevertheless, the market is dominated by solutions based on simple entering and reading data from information databases and their processing. Here, user comfort is particularly important, which can only be achieved through a user-friendly interface.
Hybrid applications excel most in the creation of graphical interfaces, competing in the simplicity and speed of implementing advanced views with animations. However, this is only one of their many advantages.
Creating a single code base effectively accelerates applying business needs (logic) in a product without worrying about implementation differences or mistakes on one of the platforms. Lower costs caused by reducing duplicate tasks greatly encourage business to convert.
However, when errors do occur, fixing and re-testing them is a single process. It eliminates the situation where the error was caused by improper requirements and another platform is duplicating the problem through lack of communication. These duplicated mistakes usually have a negative effect on the relationship between customers and contractors.
Nonetheless, we should remember that despite one code base, it may often occur that either we use native platform experts or some functionalities will not be possible to implement directly on one platform.
Hybrid applications don’t reduce the process of multiple product implementation in different stores and problems with the platform infrastructure.
