Tools and prerequisites.
WHAT ANDROID DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
The official development environment The platform software development kit An emulator, or a physical device A device with developer options enabled, for testing
WHAT iOS DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
Apple hardware The official development environment An Apple developer account, for device testing and distribution
WHAT CROSS-PLATFORM FRAMEWORKS NEED
Their own tooling, plus the native tooling for each target.
WHY BOTH
Because they ultimately produce native applications, built with native tools.
WHAT TO TEST ON
Physical devices, primarily.
WHY
Emulators do not reproduce performance, touch behaviour, battery use or real network conditions.
WHAT DEVICES TO ACQUIRE
A modest Android device representative of your users A more capable one An iOS device, if targeting it
WHY THE MODEST ONE FIRST
It reveals every performance problem the others conceal.
WHAT TO CONFIGURE
Version control, before anything else A formatter and linter A build that anyone can run from a clean checkout
