The Evolution of Custom App Developments

Custom app developments are a type of software specially developed for an organization or user. Unlike commercial off-the-shelf software, each custom app is tailor-made to the client’s needs. Believe it or not, there weren’t that many popular and mature ways to create custom software in the 2000s. Either you did it with Microsoft or you did it in other open-source languages. It was essentially “Choose your language and choose between building on Windows, Mac, or Internet Explorer”—simple as that. We’ve come a long way since then. In fact, some of the world’s most popular applications are custom app developments. In this article, you will learn about 3 famous custom app developments and how they were built. Let’s get started! 

Instagram

Instagram was actually developed only on iOS for a few years. It wasn’t until they were acquired by Facebook that they moved to Android. What’s also interesting is that the original name was Burbn, which was inspired by the creator Kevin Systrom’s taste for fine whiskeys and bourbons. While Systrom had no formal training in computer science, he learned to code on nights and weekends while working at Nextstop, a travel recommendations startup. Fast-forward 10 years and Instagram is a complex app written in Python and utilizes Django framework supported by HTML5. Learn more about how Instagram uses Python on the Instagram blog. 

Whatsapp

For the average person, WhatsApp is a simple app. You send a message to someone and they receive it. How complicated can that be? Well, since WhatsApp has over 2 billion Whatsapp users around the globe, they send a LOT of messages. According to an official WhatsApp blog post, users are sending over 65 billion messages per day. That’s 29 million messages per minute! So, it’s kind of a big deal. To support this custom-built infrastructure, they needed to optimize for message throughput. The Technical Stack used to develop WhatsApp includes Erlang, FreeBSD, Yaws, PHP, and XMPP.

Zoom

“Someday, someone is going to build something on the cloud, and it’s going to kill me.” This is what Eric Yuan told an investor as he was trying to raise money for his web conferencing company. Yuan was originally inspired to create Zoom when pursuing a long-distance relationship during college in China. Zoom was built on top of AWS as one of the main reasons they were able to beat out companies like WebEx who were still building on top of ancient technologies. Developers also used JavaScript, PHP, Python, C#, and Java to code Zoom. 

The Future of Custom App Development

Mobile app developments have evolved tenfold over the last decade. Originally only designed in Microsoft or another open-source language, custom apps can now be built in the following ways:

• Blockchain
• Progressive web apps
• iOS-only
• Android -only
• Cross-platform
• Cloud-Native (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
• Serverless
• Languages like React Native, Elixir, Javascript, Python, etc. 
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

There’s no sign of slowing down any time soon! If you’re interested in taking your organization to the next level, now is the time to invest in custom app development. Interested in developing a prototype, mobile app development, or custom software based products? Look no further than Sunflower Lab. We have years of experience building powerful software solutions for every industry. Our award-winning team of designers and developers are standing by today to build custom software for your better tomorrow. Get your free quote today.