All my years as a Software Developer, I feel that many things are forced upon me. One example is programming language. When I do website, I’m left with PHP only. Well, I’m not saying that PHP sucks. PHP is very good for backend, especially with Laravel. However, there are things that I want to offload the client side.

Okay, one example that I have is the Loan Repayment Calculator. I initially prototyped it in Python. I then rewritten it to PHP so I can host it online. I feel that one day I might need to rewrite it in JavaScript.

If it has high traffic then I will have to reimplement it for client side (browser), so each visitor will just run the calculation in their own browser. Imagine that you have to write the same thing, three times.

I know I can make it one time. There’s a way to do that with Python if I use it as a back-end. I can also use the same code the front end through PyScript.

Android Development

I am also forced to use Java / Kotlin to make Android app. I know you can use Flutter or React Native. However to achieve a good user experience we usually have to implement it Java / Kotlin. If we rely on Flutter or React Native, we are at the mercy of the Flutter / React Native developers in addition to the mercy of Android developer!

As a side note, I think will choose Flutter over React Native because I think the community is more welcoming and it has more learning resources. However, of course this is just because they’re trying to acquire developers. When there are many Flutter devs in the future, they may behave like React Native where it feels less welcoming.

That’s all for today. Thank you for reading!