In 2014, on this blog, I wrote a post in which I announced that we intended to create native mobile applications for tablets and phones (IOS and Android) and that we had planned to use Xamarin.Forms as the main programming tool. At the time, web tools were not mature enough to design applications that target all classes of personal devices be it laptops (Windows, Chrome and Apple), tablets (Android and iPad) or phones (Android and iPhone). This is no longer the case in 2018, change is the only constant and we must not be afraid to review our previous decisions. As developer polls in recent years show, the reality is simple, native development on mobile platforms is no longer important.
At To-Do Studio, with my business partner Erik, we are convinced that the best technologies in 2018 to launch software as a service (SaaS), revolves around JavaScript (at least for the front end).
We have decided to build our SaaS using one codebase, with familiar tools and web technology. In this regard, we chose Vue.js for web development. Vue.js is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It simplifies managing states in the front-end and provide composable view capabilities with an API that is as simple as possible.
I just spent the last four months learning to program with this framework. Vue is one of the easiest frameworks to learn and master, the learning curve is gentle and there is a well-defined ecosystem. Furthermore, since I already know the basics of the web, the transition was easy enough. I am not yet a pro in javascript but I am improving every day. Since I’m in charge of UI integration, I mainly focus on mastering Vuetify, the UX component framework for Vue.js that we have selected.
Mario Cardinal 