W21 - Cross-Platform and Containers

I'm preparing the next session of foundational skills mentoring and, after some thought, decided to talk about cross-platform development and containers. Although this is a large and complex topic, I hope—similar to last session with Yulu—to provide some useful and correct insights.

Why do I consider cross-platform development a foundational skill?

  1. Reducing development costs and improving deployment efficiency are the driving forces behind cross-platform technologies. With the promotion of HarmonyOS, this trend will only strengthen. Take a common example: supporting mobile (iOS, Android, Harmony), desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux), and web simultaneously. While native technologies can deliver the best user experience, relying solely on native development for such multi-platform requirements is clearly inefficient and expensive.

  2. There are many proprietary cross-platform technologies within the company, and in daily work we inevitably encounter container-related issues like Titans, MSC, and MRN. The financial services frontend has also evolved from EHC to Neo and then to Recce. A systematic understanding of cross-platform technologies helps pinpoint the root causes of problems and improves efficiency. In the era of AI-assisted coding, the need for systematic understanding is even more pronounced. Timely and effective troubleshooting, application security, and reliability are not strengths of AI alone—they require human judgment based on a systematic grasp of the technology and the actual process.

  3. Looked at within a broader technical context and from a historical perspective, cross-platform development has been evolving since the birth of computing. Each mainstream solution didn't appear in isolation but is part of an interconnected network. Recognizing this network lets us appreciate each technology's uniqueness and make accurate technology choices and judgments. Early in my career I wrote many cross-platform apps—React Native, mini programs, and others—using whatever the team had at the time just to learn the craft. I had no real sense of where those technologies came from, so no matter how much I built, I couldn't form high-quality judgments.

This time I also want to explore collaborating with AI to produce content: from initial content organization to compressing the script text, to quickly generating a ByteByteGo-style system diagram, and even trying to include a short podcast segment.

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