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General Discussion

Posted by Refath Bari
Refath Bari
595 Points

Hackathon: Web App & iOS app?

Hi, I'm attending a hackathon in my area soon with my team. Do I have a better possibility of winning if we design both a Web app and iOS app?

2 Answers

James Anwyl
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James Anwyl
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 49,960 Points
James Anwyl
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James Anwyl
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 49,960 Points

Not sure how the hackathon you are attending works. But you may find you have such a limited amount of time that it's unlikely you will finish the project.

I would say you would be better off focusing on one platform and reducing the amount of work you need to do. You could even create an API that can be consumed by both web and iOS apps first, and if you have time, build the front end.

Depends on what the rules are, how much time you have and what the judges are looking for - whether they want an actual working app, or just a proof of concept.

Keep it simple and create the minimum viable product.

Hope this helps :)

Refath Bari
Refath Bari
595 Points

So the judges at my Borough's hackathon are interested solely on the design aspect of the app. Functional helps, but we don't need any fancy back-end or APIs. Given that, do you think it's a good idea to focus on Web & iOS?

James Anwyl
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James Anwyl
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 49,960 Points

Brendan makes a good point, unless you need specific features like accessing the camera, geo-location or animations, it's probably not necessary.

I would say it might be better to focus on creating just the web app, but make it a responsive design. Start with mobiles and enhance the design for larger screen devices. That way you have something that will work on any device with a web browser and reduce the amount of work you need to do.

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points
Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points

It's easier to deploy to a web app than it is to get an iOS app onto the app store (or put on someone's device via USB cable). It's easier to get people to visit a link than to download a new app. Are you planning on using any of the native API's on the device? If you don't need to make an iOS app, I recommend not. You can show a lot of functionality in a mobile web app for an MVP. The judges also might not be iPhone users.