How should an entrepreneur focus on programming?
10 Nov 2015Took from my answer on Quora
Orignal Question:
>Should an entrepreneur focus on hybrid programming (HTML, CSS, JS) or should they focus on native tools (Java, Objective C/Swift)?
>Should an entrepreneur focus more on hybrid applications. As they can reach a higher audience and be able to get a prototype out quick. Or should they always focus on native apps?
Answer:
>Let’s discuss this case by case:
>If you don’t have programming background:
>I would suggest to not even consider spending time on learning programming skills, simply because it takes months to even get a sense of it. In addition, you don’t want to ship crap to your users, so at least the product should look decent, and somewhat reliable and maintainable, which generally requires a few years of development experience. If a founder is in this case, I would recommend consider one of the following approaches:
> 1. Find a technical co-founder;
> 2. If you are building a offline service which only need a landing page or some basic payment functionalities, try those drag-and-drop website building tools such as SquareSpace, Wix or Strikingly. They actually work amazingly well;
> 3. If you want to launch a MVP to test your idea quickly, there are some new services can build mobile/responsive web apps for you in a matter of a few days, such as Tenrocket.
>
>If you have basic programming background:
>Generally you still want to spend less time on technology side and pay more attention to product and customers. Building a product end-to-end requires programming knowledge from many aspects (aka “full-stack”), such as front-end (JS, HTML, CSS, frameworks and you need to make sure the site is responsive and works on all browsers), back-end (web service frameworks, database, APIs, load balancing, etc), native mobile client (Obj-C, Java, etc). It is just hard for one person to manage them all. So I’d recommend founders with some programming background to only do the part they already familiar with, or feel comfortable to pick up easily. and do NOT try to do everything by yourselves.
>
>If you have solid programming background:
>In most cases native app will have better user experience on mobile platforms, but hybrid will be faster and more flexible. Here are some personal recommendations:
>1. If you are planning to develop a mobile only app, and considering launch on one platform (Android or iOS) first. Focus on the officially supported native language (Java or Obj-C);
>2. If you are planning to develop a mobile only app, but on more than one platforms, take a look at Xamarin (write once, run anywhere) or React Native (Learn once, write anywhere);
>3. If you are developing a web app as well as a desktop program, take a look at Electron. It is basically a web browser presenting your web app so it can run on desktop.
>
>Lastly, note that many technical founders tend to spend time dive deeply into technology side rather than polish the idea or talk to more users. This is a red flag. You need to make sure you are making something people want all the time, rather than ship a beautifully engineered crap that no one needs it. If you are building the product by yourself, try start from a open source framework rather than building everything from the ground up, and spend more time with users instead of the code.
Credit to Quora