We made this choice at Rdio back in like 2012. Our mobile apps were written almost entirely in C#, shipping on iOS, Android, and even Windows Phone 7/8. About 70% of the code was identical on all platforms, even the super-hairy audio bits. Contrary to the prevailing notions at the time, our app had native levels of quality and performance. We could roll out a new feature an all platforms in only a little more time that it would have taken to do it for one.
That agility didn't come for free, however - we gained speed, but also traded routine bugs for exotic ones. In addition to simple null-pointer errors and the like, we got to spend two weeks digging into the Mono runtime to find a locking bug that drained users' batteries. We had our own sqlite wrapper because the built-in ones on Android and iOS had too many incompatibilities. We had our own red-black tree, for some godawful reason. We had a standing weekly call with our Xamarin reps to discuss toolchain bugs.
Ultimately, the pain ended up outweighing the savings of sharing code. At the time Rdio went bankrupt, we had substantially rewritten the apps in Java and Obj-C. RIP.
That agility didn't come for free, however - we gained speed, but also traded routine bugs for exotic ones. In addition to simple null-pointer errors and the like, we got to spend two weeks digging into the Mono runtime to find a locking bug that drained users' batteries. We had our own sqlite wrapper because the built-in ones on Android and iOS had too many incompatibilities. We had our own red-black tree, for some godawful reason. We had a standing weekly call with our Xamarin reps to discuss toolchain bugs.
Ultimately, the pain ended up outweighing the savings of sharing code. At the time Rdio went bankrupt, we had substantially rewritten the apps in Java and Obj-C. RIP.