Almost exactly 1 year ago, I was selected as the product marketing manager for NativeScript. (As you know, NativeScript is how you write truly native mobile applications with JavaScript, TypeScript or Angular. It's free, open source and very powerful.) I had a lot of respect and admiration for the NativeScript product, after having used it to build a few mobile apps for my consulting business. The product had a lot going for it, and it was time to make it grow.

The members of the NativeScript strategy team operate like a small start up. We make decisions as a team quickly, and with an eye on growth and market share. We also enjoy the resources of a 35 year old publicly traded company. Our mission was to substantially grow market awareness and adoption of NativeScript in 2016. Here are our results:

That's just how we want our graphs, isn't it? Up and to the right! Wait, what is that? You, the skeptic in the corner... what are you asking? You want to see our monthly growth numbers to make sure there are no tricks? It's all out in the open on npm-stat.com.

OK, so lots of people want NativeScript... but why?

We've established NativeScript is riding a wave of popularity, but what is it exactly? Well, NativeScript is an open source framework for building mobile applications. It's special because you can build for both iOS and Android from the same code base. Not only that, but you can use languages well known to millions of web developers to build these mobile applications. Unlike other technologies that make similar claims, NativeScript always gives you direct 100% access to each and every native platform API from your own JavaScript or TypeScript. This means you can use any native platform feature without us having to do anything. Because of this, the resulting application is a native application using native controls and APIs. You get 60+ frames per second of pure awesome performance.

Uh, what?

If that paragraph didn't excite you, maybe this one will. When I talk to organizations who have any reliance on technology, I find they are all facing the same challenge. There just aren't enough technologists to go around. This is a great problem if you ARE a technologist because wages and demand for technical skills have never been higher! However, if you are tasked with staffing for technology needs, it can be challenging finding the right developers with the right skills.

How we help solve the skills scarcity problem

The way NativeScript helps to solve this issue is through skill reuse. Web developers are plentiful. There are millions of web developers out there right now building great web applications. With NativeScript, those same web developers can reuse the skills they already know, and build truly native mobile applications. It is no longer necessary to find and recruit specialists in native languages, just because you need to build a native app. Now, an organization can streamline their recruiting, training and standardization of developers around a central, widely available set of skills.

But we have our own ways of doing things...

Do you prefer JavaScript? Babel? TypeScript? Angular? We support all of those. NativeScript fits in to your organizational standards by giving you architectural flexibility. You can use the methods you are comfortable with, without compromising on application quality or effectiveness.

Plus, NativeScript makes it easy to reuse code. You can reuse thousands of libraries and packages from npm, Cocoapods, Android Jars, you name it. Web developers are free to continue to participate in the rich world of open source they've grown accustomed to.

In addition to freely available source code, you can also reuse your own web application code. Many companies use this feature to accelerate their application development cycles. Design, build and test a single chunk of code, then reuse that code on the web application tier, the iOS and also the Android tier. In fact, one of the fun things I worked on recently is helping MeWatt, an IoT start up, tell their story of how NativeScript cut their development time by 75%. As someone who is obsessed with efficiency, this benefit is the one I'm most proud of.

Ok, what's next?

Our team executed very well over the course of 2016. We are already seeing the fruits of that preparation and execution only 5 days in 2017. NativeScript is emerging as the prime choice for enterprise cross-platform mobile development. Our legendary support combined with our fully featured framework make it easy to build, deploy and maintain mobile applications. We are working deeper with other innovative products in our company like Kendo UI and DataDirect to bring together new ways to build better applications faster. 2017 is going to be amazing!

--Dan Wilson

P.S. If you'd like a deeper understanding of NativeScript, hit me up on LinkedIn.