Once upon a time, computer programming was done in “machine language;” the low-level instructions that told the computer’s processor exactly what to do. At a somewhat higher level was assembly language, which hid much of the processor-level instructions but was still painstaking, easy to mess up, and hard to debug. Both levels were also specific to a type of processor; programming a computer with a different manufacturer’s processor meant learning a whole new language.
At one time in the history of computing, there was only a handful of high-level languages: COBOL, Ada, BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal, C, and a few others.
In his 2014 song “First World Problems,” “Weird Al” Yankovic sings about someone with issues—among them, “my house is so big, I can’t get Wi-Fi in the kitchen.” A first-world problem if there ever was one. We in developed countries take ubiquitous connectivity for granted, so it’s easy to forget that for over half of the world’s population, internet connectivity ranges from slow to nonexistent.
Let’s say your latest iOS app (discussed earlier in this space) that you've worked on so hard took off. It’s off the charts at the Apple store and you’re raking in the dough, $1.99 at a time. Great! But here’s the bad news: By not having an Android version on the market as well, you are doing the following:
