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Huỳnh Nhân Quốc
Huỳnh Nhân Quốc

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Cross-Platform Development in Golang

#programming #webview #developer #go

The Beginning: My Cross-Platform Curiosity

My programming journey started with C#, and that’s how I first met Xamarin — the tool that introduced me to the term cross-platform.

Back then, I thought it was magic — a single codebase running on both Android and iOS. But as I dug deeper, I realized Xamarin wasn’t the perfect answer. Integrations felt heavy. Visual Studio, while powerful, became cumbersome.

When I later shifted into web development, I realized something: Xamarin was boxed in. It didn’t support building web apps at all.

That’s when I discovered Ionic — a framework that opened up a new horizon. Ionic allowed me to build hybrid apps with web technologies, but it came with its own trade-offs. Its reliance on WebView made UI performance and consistency an ongoing battle.

Since early Ionic was built on Angular, I learned Angular — pairing it with Firebase to build a few small applications. Firebase worked well, but the cost was high, and the ever-changing Angular ecosystem made maintenance difficult.

Golang and the Search for a True Cross-Platform Stack

Golang has been my favorite language for years — fast, simple, and powerful. But when I tried to bring it into mobile development, the limitations became clear.

Here are a few frameworks I explored:

  • Fyne: Can build cross-platform apps, but lacks WebView support — making it hard to integrate web technologies.
  • Wails: Works beautifully on Windows, macOS, and Linux, but doesn’t support mobile platforms.
  • Gioui: Promising, but limited UI and no access to native features like camera or sensors. Those restrictions eventually led me back to React Native and Flutter — two giants in the cross-platform world.

I even deployed kitsend.com using WebView wrappers in Flutter and React Native, only to find new bottlenecks — especially when handling large files or peer-to-peer blob: URLs.

Flutter: Power and Limitations

Developed by Google, Flutter allows building high-performance apps from a single codebase. Some of its strengths are:

  • High performance: Flutter draws UI directly to the canvas instead of using native UI components.
  • Strong community: Backed by Google with extensive documentation and an active ecosystem. However, Flutter requires mastering Dart, a language unfamiliar to many developers. And building native bridges can get complex fast.

React Native: Familiar Yet Demanding

Facebook’s React Native has long been the go-to for mobile cross-platform apps. Its biggest strengths include:

  • A massive community: Countless libraries, tutorials, and tools.
  • Code reusability: You can share much of your web React code with mobile. Yet, React Native’s reliance on bridge code (Java/Kotlin or Objective-C/Swift) for native functionality makes it technically demanding — and debugging, even more so.

The Learning Curve of Choice

Comparing Flutter and React Native, I realized both are great for rapid development — but long-term scalability and restructuring often hit roadblocks.

On the other hand, Go-based frameworks like Fyne, Wails, or Gioui were elegant in philosophy but fell short in UI capabilities and system access.

That’s when a thought struck me:

“Why not use the Web itself — as the foundation for cross-platform development?”
I needed a way to deploy my own websites and apps across multiple platforms, while understanding the technologies and architectures that power true cross-platform systems — especially when built with Golang.

My Vision: Integrating Web and Native with Golang

The idea of using web UI combined with native bridges in Go has lived in my head ever since Progressive Web Apps (PWA) appeared.

PWAs were a huge step forward — but they still rely heavily on OS-level browser support.

So I started working on a hybrid approach:

🧩 The Architecture

  1. Build the UI with Web Technologies Use React, Angular, Vue, or even vanilla JS for the front-end layer — fast to iterate, easy to maintain, and consistent across platforms.
  2. Bridge Native via Golang Use Go Mobile to create secure native bridges — for camera access, file uploads/downloads, and deeper OS integration.
  3. Adopt a Truly Cross-Platform Mindset
  • Use WebView for modern UI delivery.
  • Let Golang handle system-level logic, networking, and heavy-lifting algorithms. This approach allows me to reuse both UI from the web and Go-written algorithms — connected through Go Mobile as the bridge.

The Future of Cross-Platform Technology

The cross-platform landscape is expanding rapidly.

Every tool — Flutter, React Native, or Go frameworks — has its pros and cons. But I believe the future lies in flexibility, not framework loyalty.

The convergence of web and native technologies means we no longer have to choose between performance and freedom.

Imagine a world where your UI is written once, your logic in Go runs anywhere, and your creativity isn’t limited by the platform you deploy on.

That’s the kind of future I’m building toward.

This journey isn’t just about learning frameworks — it’s about learning how to use the tools you love to create efficiently and meaningfully.

And as always — with the right mindset and persistence, every technical barrier can be crossed.

Every small step we take, every experiment we run, becomes part of the larger story — the long road of a developer’s dream.

NOTES

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