Brian’s 10 Rules for how to write cross-platform code

Posted by : Brian Wilson, CTO at Backblaze

I’ve had a lot of success in my 20 year software engineering career with developing cross platform ‘C’ and ‘C++’ code. At Backblaze, we just released the Mac beta version of our online backup service, so I thought it an apt time to discuss my 10 rules for writing cross-platform code. We develop an online backup product where a small desktop component (running on either Windows or Macintosh) encrypts and then transmits users’ files across the internet to our datacenters (running Linux.) We use the same ‘C’ and ‘C++’ libraries on Windows, Mac, and Linux interchangeably. I estimate it slows down software development by about 5 percent overall to support all three platforms. However, I run into other developers or software managers who mistakenly think cross platform code is difficult, or might double or triple the development schedules. This misconception is based on their bad experiences with badly run porting efforts. So this article is to quickly outline the 10 simple rules I live by to achieve efficient cross platform code development.




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Why "Mobile first" may already be outdated

What matters is screens, not devices. Mobile app driven companies are now building complimentary web apps.

For a number of years now, we’ve all been hit over the head time and again with “mobile first” and “mobile only”. Those of us building software since before the iPhone have hacked our brains, our processes, our companies, to ensure we start thinking “mobile first” rather than web first. There are books, courses, and conferences about being “mobile first”. But if “mobile” is our future, why are almost all the most successful mobile driven businesses building web apps designed for larger screens? All these mobile businesses have recently built web apps for use on large screens:

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