PLATFORM PERILS: In an ideal world, your app will run on both the cutting-edge and old-school devices available in classrooms. But reality is different, and something that runs on a PC Firefox browser may not work on Chromebooks. Flexibility is important--but development cost isn't cheap.
Thankfully, Lee Wilson, CEO of Filament Games, breaks down the pros and cons between different platform development strategies like "code balkanization" (building native apps for each different operating system), and using tools like Adobe Air to port the same source code to run on all platforms. The future, he believes, lies in HTML5, which promises to be the "one native code base that runs everywhere." For games, Wilson recommends Unity, an increasingly popular engine for game developers.
