Cross-platform Development in C
Business expansion and the growth of the enterprises across the globe have led to the growth of offshore development teams and a mobile workforce. Nevertheless, the technological enhancements and the growth of Internet which paved way for enterprises to expand their business also facilitated in the mobile workforce and distant teams to be connected 24/7. Further innovations such as smartphones and tablets along with high speed networks and mobile applications have helped the employees access the corporate data from any remote locations. Nevertheless, there has been an increasing demand for mobility in enterprises. Though mobility offers new dimensions for the enterprises, this also brings in challenges both for the enterprise as well as the developer. With the ever-changing customer needs, security issues and changing technology, enterprises can keep ahead of the competition by updating operating systems, or applications. To combat these issues, technology giants have worked out measures that will facilitate professionals to develop flexible and scalable applications customized for clients without the frequent need to upgrade OS or change OS. Involving in cross-platform development of applications will help enterprises to stay relevant in the competitive market, and evolve as per the customer’s ever-changing digital lifestyle. Living in a world of application mobility the end-users look towards every new software product launch to be available on various operating systems. Launching on any one of the platforms isn’t considered a full launch and being accessible on a desktop and a mobile device has become today’s minimum requirement. With C, and C++, as the most portable languages, the IT giants have worked their way to cross-platform development in C. A cross-platform application refers to any computer program or software that can run on multiple computer-platforms. The platform however, refers to the computer-architecture,operating system, software-framework and programming languages. Cross-platform software are of two types; one that requires compilation for each platform that it supports, and the other that can be directly run on any platform without special preparation. In order for software to be considered cross-platform, it must be able to function on more than one computer architecture or operating system. With different operating systems have different application programming interfaces or APIs, this is difficult. However, with today business world being connected through corporate networks and local area networks, the varied IT infrastructure across locations are linked, making cross-platform computing increasingly necessary. The cross-platform development in C with its source-level virtualization technology besides providing robust operating system interface architecture for flexible real-time application development also protects the software from being locked to one OS. Further, with ability of the software to support multiple OS and different versions ensures freedom from porting issues. Related Links: OS Simulator, ada to c