Iâm new to software development, < 1 year. But from everything Iâve seen, the closest thing youâll get to cross platform is to learn C++.
I know that doesnât address the OPâs question about a framework that does all the magic for you, where it basically works like one massive adapter pattern providing one API in the place of the different APIs of all the platforms you wish to deploy to.
Even learning a low level language doesnât solve the problems folks have addressed in this thread. Each platform has idiosyncrasies that call for different code. There will be different ways of handling user input and display. With C++ you still need to know how to use the various persistence technologies which are unique on each platform. EtcâŠ
I think that the dream for a cross platform magic bullet will always be a matter of degrees and compromises. Exactly HOW cross platform do you want it to be? What I mean is, when you push for cross platform, do you want one code base that will run on EVERY platform? Android, iOS, web, macOS, Windows etc⊠Or do you just want to cross two platforms? Just the mobile platforms?
If you narrow the degree of what you call cross platform to just the Apple ecosystem, you still see technologies that are imperfect compromises. I would argue that Auto Layout is a kind of cross platform technology. It allows you to build one app that runs and displays data on a wide variety of devices. And even that isnât a magic bullet, and it was built by Apple itself to solve a narrow set of problems.
So, if the company that owns a given platform canât perfect a âwrite once, deploy everywhereâ technology for something simple like front end UI stuff, how am I to believe thereâs a framework out there that will let me compile full apps for very different hardware? Oh, and the framework is free and open source-ish, you say?