Choice

In 2007 I had a decision to make: learn Ruby or keep developing in PHP. Then, Ruby on Rails clones, like CakePHP or CodeIgniter, were promising a future for a non-sucking way to develop web-apps in PHP. I mean, the community was huge and they all knew that PHP frameworks could be better. I deeply felt that things will improve, so I remained a PHP—not so much—happy camper. I felt that PHP sucked but it had the opportunity to get bearable through the aforementioned frameworks. In 2008, when Rails 2.0 was released, I reconsidered my initial choice and never looked back. Now it’s obvious that neither Cake nor CodeIgniter caught up with the original.

I feel I am faced with a similar choice now. Should I remain a web developer, or start getting serious about native applications? It seems like opinions are split on this one. There is the Google vision and the Apple one.

The Google vision is that everything will be a web app in the future. The acceleration of new web technologies and the quickness of their implementation in modern browsers give me hope that it’s true.

Apple backs a native clients – online infrastructure future. This approach has gained a lot of traction in the last 2-3 years because of iOS.

My knowledge lies in the web and I hope that Google’s vision will come true. I’ve invested thousands of hours in learning web technologies and it is hard for me to throw all that away. It is a bet and I hope that this time I am making the right decision.