WASM, .net and PWAs

Well, there it is, a headline that is more TLA (three-letter acronym) than content.

This combination of acronyms actually means something for how software is developed cross-platform for consumption by you, dear user.

Building usable applications that will run across platform has been infernally difficult, it's expensive to build an app, and most of them are used once or twice then gather dust.

In addition to this, both Apple and Google are clearing out apps that seem to be either a packaged website or have been built using an app template service.

Developments in web technology have served to reduce the cost of delivering a web application, but web apps operate poorly offline, don't take advantage of features of devices and are prone to not working exactly as intended.

At the moment I'm currently working with two companies who both want a solution to work cross-platform on multiple devices (including traditional web), be really accessible for their staff, to work online or offline and perform just as well as a native application.

This simplicity of use is critical, one is aimed at time-poor corporate types and the other is aimed at forklift drivers in a warehouse. We need to build super simple, super robust, super performant applications which operate with minimal operational support.

The solution we're gravitating towards is as follows:

1. Back End - The back-end of the application needs to run server-less. We don't need to be maintaining even virtual Linux or Windows servers and at worst case run in fungible containers. Dotnet core 3.1 lends itself to this; the server technology is super mature, easy to test and frankly, Microsoft delivers the best and most productive developer experience in Azure DevOps and Microsoft Visual Studio.
2. Front End - I am gravitating to Microsoft's Blazor Project (on WebAssembly) configured to work as a Progressive Web Application. This means for normal tasks, the app can run as a "normal" website but can be installed on devices just like an application.

The cool bits about this is there is no need to wire up weird Javascript, we can use gRPC to chat using binary representations of real objects (instead of the bloated JSON format) - Apps can be tested more, run faster and can really take advantage of the capabilities of the target device.

So, if you have to create an app, take a look at the following resources:

• Publish dotnet core applications to google app engine flex
• Create Progressive Web Apps with Blazor
• What is Blazor (WASM and C#)

Enjoy the resources and have a superb time creating...