I have been thinking and discussing with some folks about platforms. Currently there are two approaches to building a platform. The first is building the runtime environment. The quintessential example is Windows OS. If you build desktop apps you use tools specifically designed for building applications on the Windows OS like Visual Basic, PowerBuilder and C++ with MFC. With the rise of the web and no browser monopoly, developers had to deal with fragmentation of the platform. The developer tools and frameworks began to become the platform. Essentially the tools hid the OS or Browser from the developer. Developers just needed to learn the framework and then deploy where the app would run. The two biggest runtime platforms today are Java and .NET. Java’s write once run everywhere captured developers attention. While Java failed on the GUI front I believe it was an implementation issue not a problem with the paradigm.
As iOS market share erodes and Android continues to fragment, developers need to tackle this problem of write once run everywhere head on. Which brings us back to the question of building a platform. The difference is that you the developer must pick what constitutes the platform. What I mean by platform is you the developer chose the OS or your tools as the platform. Neither choices is better than the other. Rather the choice defines how you develop your app and constraints that might be imposed by your choice.
