You want to develop your own app. What are the best tools to use?

To develop anything new perfect planning and the target audience is required to deliver perfectly. The target audience is the utmost requirement. To define this you can ask yourself a question, Is the app required for Web users, Android users, ios users. Depending on the answer the platform needs to be decided. For Web- JS, Node, Java and required frameworks. For Android App- React Native, Flutter etc For ios App- React Native, Swift and many more. The main point is requirements and how you need to deliver that product.

This is the most important question which a dev needs to ask himself/herself like for what is the target for this app is it going to be a web app, a mobile app or a desktop app, because based on that the other decisions like choosing the tech stack will take place

You can choose any platform. Coding Language with you are comfortable. There is no perfect platform or language for start doing. Your aim to create product is important than this anyone. If you are making any app you can start with Android Studio using Java or Python. There are many other platforms as well present. You can choose iOS development as well.

When you say an app then it signifies to some package bundle which you can transfer to any one without having dependencies outside. Easy to share and independent of platform you wish for. To achieve all this at single place I recommend QT as framework to start with.

Platform is the most important thing to decide before developing the project. The tech stack of the project is directly dependent on the intended platform of the application. Based on the platform we have to alter our tech stack. For example, if our intended platform is web browsers of large devices then an ordinary web application development tech stack would be enough but if we are targeting all the devices in various different sizes then we would need a responsive design CSS Framework like Tailwind CSS or Bootstrap to be included in the tech stack. Like wise if we are developing applications for mobile devices like Android and IOS we need to use Cross Platform Development. Flutter would be satisfying our needs. So platform comes first

Code editor or an IDE is just like a gym where you would build your body. Choosing a gym with less equipments and facilities would end up taking more time for bringing out the result. This is exactly the way how IDE and Code Editor works. When comparing code editor and IDE, IDE would act better that code editor in terms of tools that they provide but eventually IDE will be heavy application to run in your system. Examples of IDE are Android Studio, Visual Studio, Pycharm. On the other hand there are code editors that will be light weight in nature but doesn't provide much of tools like IDE. Examples of Code Editors are VS Code, Sublime, Atom. So it is upto our needs and capacity of the system to choose the better development tool.

Version control system plays a crucial role when it comes to developing applications as a team. It helps in managing the code, comparing the previous versions of code and then also helps in reverting a code change if needed. VCS makes life easier by bringing the provision to collaborate with each other in a single code base. This makes co-developers easily pull the latest source and also to merge their change. The concept of Pull Requests approval keep the code clean and consistent without dumping buggy or inconsistent code as it is. The architects would have control over the code check-ins to maintain standard in the code. So choosing a VCS and pushing the base code would be the first step after starting the development.

To perform anything or to deliver anything more efficiently and with pace, a team is required and to let the team collaborate and work together VCS is the requirement. A version control system (VCS) is a collection of software tools that track changes made to a file or set of files over time. VCSs can help you collaborate with other programmers and recall specific versions later. A VCS is essential for any app development project, as it helps you avoid losing your work, maintain consistency, and resolve conflicts. Some of the most widely used VCS are Git, Mercurial, and Subversion. You can also use a hosting service like GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab to store your code online and access it from anywhere.

Choosing version control is crucial at every given point of time during development. Even if you are a single person working on your app version control system make your life easy to keep track of your milestones you keep on achieving without worrying about the working and non working implementation of yours.

Choosing the right testing tools is crucial for app development. Appium and Selenium are excellent for mobile and web apps, respectively. For Java applications, JUnit or TestNG offer robust testing frameworks. Postman simplifies API testing, while Cypress is ideal for web apps. Robot Framework supports various application types with a keyword-driven approach. Katalon Studio provides a comprehensive solution for web, API, and mobile testing. Visual Studio App Center offers a suite of testing tools for mobile apps. Consider factors like project requirements, team expertise, and integration capabilities when selecting a tool.

There are so many Testing tool available in Market. Now it’s your call to which software testing tool is going to fulfil your needs for testing. There are Open source software tool and paid one also present. For Eg. if you are working for any Banking project and security is top priority then you can go with HP UFT. For open source Selenium is best.

For API development and testing i highly recommend using tools like Insomnia and Postman. They are essentially the google chrome browser for APIs. You can test all the various routes paths for your API which are highly customizable to add all requires headers, params, request body, and authorization properties. There are also advanced features for setting up environments and variables. Store theses as schemas to share with your dev team.

For developing an application once the platform is decided we need to analyse on what programming language would be best suited to develop the application in the choosen platform. For example if we are planning to build web application, then we can build web based applications using languages like python, javascript or java. We also need to think about the non functional requirements for the application like for example scalability, availability, security which helps in creating a robust application.

When developing an app, several important points to consider include: 1. Purpose and Target Audience 2. User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) 3. Platform and Technology 4. Performance 5. Security 6. Scalability 7. Testing and Quality Assurance: 8. Feedback and Iteration 9. Monetization Strategy 10. Legal and Compliance By addressing these points during the development process, you can increase the chances of creating a successful and well-received app.

For a new programmer you should also consider your own/teams skills. It's better to have as much coverage on as much of the relevant team's skills in choosing which tool is right for your organization. It's very common not to have all the knowledge in place and there are frameworks/tools for every part of your tech stack that can accommodate for it. It's a good idea to start first with what programming languages you are familiar with, what needs said languages suit and what the opportunity cost in time spent learning to apply them may entail.

There are tools and frameworks that can work perfectly with each other. Choose a technology that you know, and continue from that. For mobile, a cross platform solution might be a good option ( React Native or Flutter). ReactJs or VueJS for fronted, using NextJS if you want to make a powerful solution. The backend uses Nodejs, Python, Java, or PHP). A no-code tool might be a good option if you have no technical background. I prefer to learn one programming language and apply it everywhere, learn Typescript ( javascript), which you can learn after React fundamentals, and apply to Fronted using React, React Native for Mobile, add that with Nodejs, Express, with MongoDB.