Hello, I am still a student and would like to ask a question. Currently, I am developing in mobile development with Flutter in the frontend and Python in the backend part. Right now I have to make a choice about developing a mobile app or developing a backend to progress more professionally. My questions are as follows:
1) If I prefer the mobile application area, will I only work with the Ui/Ux developer with the front-end and code the designs in Swift Kotlin languages, am I responsible for the back-end software?
2) I have a product that generates new ideas so I like to control the development and work there because the backend is the brain, but are they independent from each other in the backend mobile application? Is the mobile app developer responsible for the backend software?
3) I don't like graphic design because I don't like it if it's not perfect and I get stressed. Am I responsible for the graphic design in the mobile app?
4) Is a mobile app developer also a backend developer?
I know these are very simple questions, but they are very important to me. Thanks for your answers.
Hi Hüseyin! 1-2) In my experience If you are a Mobile Applications Developer you will have the following responsabilities: - Develop (not designing) both functionality and screens of the app you are working - Consume (not develop) third party or self company owned APIs or Backend services - Distribution tasks. - Mantainance tasks. Now, there will always be companies wishing you know the whole thing (ui/ux, backend, frontend, mobile, cd/ci, data science, etc.). And of course it will be helpful for you to know a little bit of the stuff around mobile development, but it's not very common since it's not part of the responsabilities of a mobile app dev.
3) No, you are not responsable for the designs of your application, that's why companies have Product designers, ux designers, ui designers for preparing the screens, logos, color palettes, etc for products. As a developer your job is to see and examine the designs and take them from Figma, InVision, Zeplin, etc to the Code editor.
4) This is the thing, if you are working as a Mobile Developer you might know about Mobile development, not backend, not frontend, not ui ux. BUT if you know a little about backend that might be helpful although backend should not be your responsability.
I hope this makes sense to you. Cheers!
As a mobile developer, I'm usually a member of a larger team and it's usually another person's responsibility to develop the backend/API, and another person's to do the UX/design. Very very few teams use cross-platform tools like Flutter or React Native, because tools like those tend to make mediocre apps that scale poorly and are impossible to debug, so make sure to get familiar with Swift/iOS or Kotlin/Android (or both).
Hey Jake, I would love to know your opinion on Ionic. Around 15% of apps in the app store are built with Ionic and love to know your thoughts on it?
I'm highly skeptical of even the intentions of any framework that tries to replace mobile devs with web devs. That sounds like it serves the desires of myopic project managers at the expense of the sanity of any engineer that has to maintain the app longer than a month.
Plus, everything that I said above is gonna be true of every cross-platform tool. If your code is so abstract that you're writing web code to generate an iOS app, a web app, and an android app, your code is too abstract to be meaningful in solving problems, debugging issues, scaling solutions, or making an app that follows the interface guidelines of all platforms in a natively idiomatic way.
