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For my latest startup endeavor, MoneyPhone, I decided to develop and launch the product using web technologies. The main reason for this was that I’m 1) simply better at programming using HTML, CSS, & JavaScript, and 2) I really wanted to use something cross platform if possible. It’s just really awful to be an Android guy, create an app, and then everyone you show it to has an iPhone. And creating an iPhone app when you’re really an Android guy is kind of a bummer as well. So naturally, I just decided to go with web technologies given that my particular project did not require that I tap into any lower level system type stuff that might require native code.

However, I ran into some serious problems recently trying to market MoneyPhone. Launched as a web application at the URL https://moneyphone.app, people didn’t really seem to understand what a web app is. Is it a website? Or is it an app? People just didn’t seem to care or understand. However, this upcoming week I plan on solving this problem by packaging the app up as a hybrid application using Adobe PhoneGap (or Apache Cordova) and publishing it on the Google Play Store, and the App Store at some point as well.

But all of this web-dev stuff has left me with a little imposter syndrome as of late. So is this thing really an app? Or am I just some poser bundling his ‘website’ up with a wrapper, putting it on the App Store, and calling himself a developer? Possibly.

Although that’s not really the point of this post however. The point of this post is to make myself feel better about my choice of technologies by making note of the fact that Slack, a company built on HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and now the Electron Hybrid Application Framework, recently went public on the New York Stock Exchange at a market capitalization of $19,500,000,000. Badda bing! Badda boom!

UPDATE (6/23/2019): Since I don’t actually use Slack, I’m not sure how popular the electron version of Slack is. Maybe what really took off was their web app, and they just also happened to release an electron based version for Desktop as well. But never let the truth get in the way of a good story 😉