Should I Create a Website, Mobile App or Software?

One of the benefits of coding is that it is so vast and you can create anything. For example, you can develope: your own international store on a website; a mobile app that utilizes the user's camera and geo-location; or even you own desktop computer game. The only limit is your imagination - and the technical limits of your equipment (especially for computer games).

Whatever you create, they should all serve a purpose: solving a problem. Empathy programming is a phrase you hear often, and refers to understanding the perspective of the end-user. You think of their needs and requirements, and link it to how you can help them. A user may think they need all kinds of products for their business idea, but really only one type would suffice.

For instance, a user who requires an ecommerce website may also want a mobile app, whereby their users can also order on the store. In addition they may also want a system install in their physical stores, which enables customers to order from the device that utilises a software you coded (such as in McDonalds). Yet, particularly when starting out, only one type of product will do the trick.

But what are the main differences between developing a website, mobile app and software?

Website

One constant with a website or web app is that they always communicate with a server. This is via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and is the basis of how data is communicated on the World Wide Web. The method is achieved through a Request-Response cycle and is fundamental to understand if you want to create your own website. Your browser, also known as the client, sends a HTTP request to the server. The server processes this request and sends a response with the requested data. However, when a user types in your URL, the Request-Response cycle is just one part of the process.

First the browser searches the Domain Name System (DNS) for the given address and finds its associated Internet Protocol (IP) address. This is why one of the first things you need to establish when making a website is your domain name, and acquiring this property on, for example, GoDaddy . After the IP address has been found, the browser then establishes a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection with the web server.

Once this is established the Request-Response cycle begins and in the case of just typing in a web URL, the user is sending a GET request to the server to retrieve all the information needed to read the webpage. It's through this TCP connection that the server is able to send back this information in a response. Once retrieved, the browser renders this information via one of multiple methods such as Client-side rendering, which prioritises the loading of JavaScript, or Server-side rendering, which prioritises the loading of HTML content. Every request is independent of the next, therefore neither the server nor the client stores this information by default. This is why caching can be important as you can save copies of web page resources to improve the performance of loading times. Also what is now commonplace is HTTP Secure protocols (i.e. https). With this, the data sent via the TCP connection is encrypted making is harder to breach.

From the beginning this can all sound complicated but its important to understand when you connect the Frontend and Backend of a web app. The majority of the latter are Fullstack because you need a functional Backend to have usable features, and you need a flowing Frontend to have a user-friendly user interface. And on the topic of user interfaces, you also need to consider responsiveness.

One problem you won't necessarily have with mobile apps or software, is how your application will look on different screen sizes. For websites however, users will view it on a plethora of viewports ranging from super narrow 300px mobile devices, to gigantic 4000px projector screens. Luckily, you have a lot of tools at your disposal as well as various approaches. For example, you have mobile-first and desktop-first design . This essentially asks whether you to prioritise mobile or desktop screen sizes. Generally, the former is preferred. For a website, you also have to consider browser compatibility.

When new features are released on either JavaScript, HTML or CSS (the three amigos of website development), not all browsers are able to render them as they use different engines. Google Chrome uses the V8 engine to render website assets, whereas Safari uses Webkit. A key tool that you can use however is caniuse . This is able to tell you whether the latest CSS scroll animation, for example, is compatible with Chrome, Safari, Firefox and other browsers.

Finally, hosting your website is also an unavoidable step you must follow in website development. When you have created your web app, you will have a list of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files along with potential media assets such as images, videos or audio tracks that will have to be stored somewhere. This is where hosting comes in, as it provides a virtual storage space for this files, where the server can access them and send to the client. Although you can theoretically self-host, it's not recommended unless you have the resources and the technical knowledge to achieve it. You need either a physical or virtual private server (VPS) to begin with, along with the technical expertise of server administration and networking.

It's much more common to use a third-party hosting service and there are loads to choose from. For example, if you use a JavaScript framework, its common to deploy these apps on Netlify, Vercel or Render (though more common for Backend apps). There are also an endless supply of Amazon Web Services, each with their own traits and specialty. In fact AWS services have such a penetration in the hosting space that the aforementioned tools Netlify, Vercel and Render, use AWS themselves. They are really just AWS services in disguise.

There's a lot to unpack with web development and I could go on, showing my natural bias towards it, but how does developing a mobile app differ?

Mobile App

The difference between developing a mobile and web app is something I have already spoken about . Nevertheless, how it differs in reference to the HTTP Protocol, responsiveness and browser compatibility is not something I have discussed.

As I've said before, a mobile app is essentially a piece of software that exists on your mobile device. Depending on how this app functions, it does not inherently need the internet to function. For instance, you can have (and easily make if you are so inclined) a calculator app on your phone which functions perfectly well without WiFi. This of course is in direct contrast to a web app, and, although you can make provisions for certain web pages to function on offline mode with caching and cookies, there's only so far you can go and do without a TCP connection.

Moreover, as a mobile app either exists within the Android or iOS universe, you only have to worry about one rendering engine, as opposed to many. This also means when you publish your app, you essentially only have the choice of two services: Google Play and the Apple Store. They in this instance take on the role of hosting your files. Though this of course is not without its challenges, as both publishers have strict guidelines and hurdles to jump over, so you'll spend a lot of time making sure your app complies with their regulation.

One secret weapon of mobile apps however, are its native features. For instance, most smartphones have a camera, microphone, GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, proximity sensor, touchscreen and more. With this hardware, you can create all sorts of things which is a lot more difficult with a computer or laptop.

Although how does developing software in general offer a different experience?

Software

Despite the variety and different approaches to developing a website or mobile app, nothing is more vague nor vast than software development.

Software comes in all different shape and sizes, from something small such as a digital stopwatch to something huge such as an Air Traffic Control system. Unlike with websites, which will always consist of the same languages (give or take PHP), or mobile apps which consist either of Kotlin or Swift code at its core, software can vary largely from the language it's written in. To name a few, you have: operating systems such as Windows and Linux which use C and C++; Large Language Models (LLM), which are the core of AI software, written in Python; extremely powerful gaming engines, such as Unity written in C#; supply chain management software with Java; and many more. With these examples, it really gives the impression that anything is possible. Or in other words, to every problem, there's a software that can solve it.

As software is an application that needs to be installed, its files generally exist within its own directory. Although this means there's no need either for a hosting service, you still need to find some sort of means of turning you code into what's called an executable or .exe for short. The latter may sound familiar as when you start a software application on your device, you often look for the .exe file. Of course whatever operating system you are using, you want to make sure that you packaged your code into a compatible or OS-native executable, otherwise it won't run.

One example of this is Launch4J for Java applications. This tool essentially bundles the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) into a Windows native .exe file. On launch the Java Virtual Machine is initiated and loads the main Java class, and executes the application. In essence you could view this as deploying your code, as you would for a website app.

Perhaps one of the main differences between a say desktop software application and website is the styling. Whereas on a website you can easily play with CSS, as the stylesheet is linked in the HTML file, this isn't an option on a, say, C++ application. For the latter you employ different approaches such as utilising the Windows API functions, if you app exists on this OS, or you can employ external UI frameworks or Widgets to modify your user interface.

Ultimately, developing a website, mobile app or piece of software will offer very different and unique developer experiences.

On the other hand, whatever you learn from one project can always be transferred to the next project. This is because the core principles of coding and solving a problem will always remain the same.