How to Develop Applications in Record Time in 2021

Every programmer knows how cumbersome it is to use constantly new and different software tools to create and maintain all the separate types of projects that have become necessary in our modern world … iOS apps, Android apps, web apps, websites, Windows Desktop apps, Apple Desktop apps, PWAs …

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could find one single framework that would remove all the complexity and produce all these different flavors of apps from a SINGLE codebase ...

To find out if a framework like this exists, I had the following interview with Danny Connell, much applauded Cross-Platform Apps Instructor on YouTube & Udemy. Danny is also an Indie App Developer and creator of Fudget, the highest-rated personal finance app. 

Danny spent years working for various Web agencies around the UK, mainly as a Front-End Developer but also some design and Back-End Development. He used technologies including JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Angular & Vue to create websites & web apps.

Back in 2011, while working at Reading Room Manchester, a colleague Andy told him about Cordova, a framework that allows you to create apps (using HTML, CSS & JavaScript) that could be deployed to the App Stores.

Danny became very excited about this. In his spare time, he created his first app, Speed Distance Time Calculator using HTML, CSS, JavaScript & jQuery and deployed it to the iOS App Store.

This was a lot of fun and made me about ￡2 - ￡3 per day (and still does).

At this point he didn’t think he could make a living out of it - at ￡2 per day per app he would need about 50 apps in order to quit his job (and he’d never have time for this). So he put apps on the back burner for a while, and just enjoyed paying for his lunch with his app.

A couple of years later, Danny was feeling bit depressed & fed up with his job. He felt like he needed to do something more creative. And so he had a go at another app.

For a while he’d been managing his money by using an Excel spreadsheet - adding all his income for the month & all his expenses - to work out what he had left for pocket money each month.

Danny realized that it was silly to be still using Excel for this in 2013 - there MUST be an app for this. He searched far and wide and couldn’t find anything - only overly complicated budget apps which he found difficult to use - even as a technical person. He also noticed a lot of people complaining in reviews about how complicated these apps were.

So I decided to create my own app, which would be kinda like a mobile spreadsheet, but even simpler to use.

So Danny started working on his next Cordova app Fudget, using HTML, CSS, JavaScript & jQuery. It took him about 6 months working evenings and weekends and he finally published it in 2014 as paid app to the iOS App Store.

At first, it didn’t succeed as a Paid app, it made less money than his first app. Danny decided to set it to a Free app and see what would happen.

And so for the first year, Fudget made nothing. But it gradually started to build up a user base. After a year he added an In-App Purchase - which added more features to the app - and Fudget started to make about ￡10 per day, which he was really happy with.

Danny also added some Google Ads to the app.

Adding these ads instantly added about ￡20 per day to the revenue with only about 2 hours work. This is still my favorite 2 hours work ever. 

With all these efforts, and also by publishing Android, Mac & Windows versions of Fudget, the revenue kept increasing over the next couple of years until, eventually, in 2017 (about 3 years after he published it) he was making enough to quit his job.

At the time, he was working as a Hybrid App Developer for Reason Digital creating cross-platform apps using Ionic and also some web sites and apps using Vue. This was a fantastic job, which he was very happy with.

Nevertheless, I handed in my notice and worked my last day in August 2017.

Since then I’ve created a few more apps. However, a couple of my most promising apps were taken down against my control - an app called YouTube Music Videos which I was asked to take down by Google - and an app called Movie Scores which I was asked to take down by both Metacritic & Rotten Tomatoes.

After this, I was getting a bit disheartened with making apps and decided to look into doing something else. 

At the VueJS Manchester Community Meetup in 2019, I delivered a talk about Quasar -

“How to Create an App for iOS, Android, Mac & Windows in 30 minutes!”.

Danny decided to also record a video version of the talk beforehand and put it on YouTube mainly for people who attended the VueJS Meetup to have a reference.

But the video seemed to attract quite a lot of attention and lots of views & comments, so he decided to do some more videos.

People started asking for courses, so I created a Quasar course on Udemy - which is now one of the highest rated VueJS courses on Udemy.

I’ve since created a few more courses and keep on creating YouTube videos about Quasar, VueJS and Web Development.

- How did you get to know about Quasar?

When Fudget was starting to take off, I created versions for Android, Mac & Windows. It was difficult to manage these different platforms because I had multiple codebases and multiple git repos and it was very challenging.

I had wished for a framework which would allow me to create an app from one codebase for all these platforms.

Then, with some random Googling, I chanced upon Quasar - it wasn’t very well known at the time, it was still in a version 0.x.

I started playing around with Quasar and was absolutely blown away.

I found it unbelievable how much was possible with Quasar - and how many problems it solves. 

- Could you tell me about the Quasar team?

I just hope they can find a way to really get Quasar “out there” as it deserves to be 1000 times more popular than it is right now.

The Quasar team seems like a bunch of cool, highly committed dudes.

- Could you tell me about your projects, and how Quasar fits in?

I’m currently working on Fudget 2 using Quasar Framework. I intend to have versions for iOS, Android, Mac & Windows and possibly a web-based PWA version as well, that Pro users can sign in to.

And Quasar will make this so much easier for me this time around.

Other than Fudget 2, I mainly use Quasar for projects for my videos & courses - such as my PWA Instagram Clone which can be seen in my Quasar PWA Course and in my YouTube Series.

- What is the future of system development?

I hope the new changes in Vue 3, along with all of the incredible Vue UI frameworks (Quasar, Vuetify, BootstrapVue) will help Vue to catch up with React in terms of adoption.

React is currently about 4 or 5 times more popular, but Vue definitely deserves to be right up there with it.

Vue is just so beautiful to use. Even after all these years, I still feel warm & fuzzy inside - every time I sit down to work on a Vue project. 

- How do you think Quasar fits into this future?

I hope the team can find a way to make this happen, and get Quasar where it deserves (and needs) to be - adopted by millions of developers.

I hope at some point, a really big app by a big name will be created with Quasar - and hopefully this will help to really put Quasar on the map.

It baffles me that Quasar hasn’t taken over the world yet.

- Is there anything you want to add?

You can check out my YouTube Channel my Courses and Fudget and you can follow me on Twitter