My fine peer and all round good fellow, Faruk Ateş a few days ago went into considerable detail about Native v Web apps (those who read this blog, or follow me on twitter, or who have ever spent more than about 3 minutes in a room with me know is something I think and talk a lot about). One thing I would pull Faruk up on is his characterisation of a post of mine on this topic a few months back, as being

dismayed at the notion that native apps are “inherently better” than web apps, simply because they’re native.

In that post, far from being dismayed, I was frustrated at the argument that applications built using native technologies (for example Objective-C and CocoaTouch) are by that very nature inherently better than apps built using web technologies. The proof this isn’t so is trivially easy (and indeed is a logical one). If a single application built using web technologies is better than a single application using native technologies, which is clearly true, then the distinction is not the tools used. QED. Faruk however, takes the discussion further, arguing

that the quality of an application is determined by three factors, in order of significance: The quality of the work done by the developer; The quality of the environment in which the application is used; The quality of the tools at their disposal

which I think is more than a fair analysis. But ultimately I think we’re talking at cross purposes. I think web technologies, plus platform native APIs (at present, largely available via bridging technologies like the marvellous phoneGap) in many cases represent the best of both worlds. As platforms and screens fragment and proliferate, targeting even a small subset of this increasingly chaotic landscape with native apps is going to become, indeed already largely is, impossible. Afterall, if the likes of Netflix and AT&T, who must surely have some of the deeper pockets in the world, are going down the path of building their native apps for all kinds of platforms with web technologies, surely there’s a lesson there for smaller companies and developer groups? I think within 5 years, if not less, native apps will be seen as the stop gap measure that they are. For now, those platform APIs are indeed very important for creating first class apps (in many cases) - but the coming of DAP (some of which is already supported in Android 3) means that those days are numbered. Whatever else I’d suggest to developers, from either a web or more traditional programming background - acquire JavaScript knowledge, and an understanding of the DOM and CSS - these are going to be increasingly widely used in the years to come.