Dropbox engineers explain why they gave up sharing code and used native languages

Dropbox engineers explained in an official blog post why the company abandoned the strategy of sharing code on iOS and Android and switched to using the native languages ​​of each platform . Dropbox initially chose C++ when developing iOS and Android mobile apps. The idea behind it was to write the code once in C++ instead of writing it twice in Java and Objective C respectively.

But now Dropbox has abandoned this strategy and switched to using Swift and Kotlin, the languages ​​of their respective platforms. The reason for this decision is that the hidden overhead of sharing code is actually very high, which is ultimately more expensive than writing the code twice.

Dropbox said that to share code you need to maintain your own frameworks, libraries and development environment, solve the differences between different platforms, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit and retain experienced C++ developers. These expenses ultimately make sharing code not as simple and cheaper as developing with the IDE of each platform.