Because if - as suggested - the _only_ requirement is "an arrow that randomly points left or right every time you tap the screen", the solutions is so simple that it _can_ be done in HTML/JS - quite probably written, tested and delivered for less than the yearly Apple Dev subscription required to do it as a native app.
If I had a friend who needed that functionality and had a decent reason but no budget, say for an art project or a non profit event, I'd certainly offer to build them an HTML/JS thing for nothing. I'd think twice about starting an XCode project, dealing with App Store submission requirements, needing to deal with people asking how they install it on their Android tablets, etc.
At least for me - sometimes the stupidly simple HTML version of a thing is a perfectly good solution. (For the TSA, there are without doubt more requirements than the stupidly oversimplified one proposed here...)
So you're going to make it a web page. How are you going to secure it? How are you going to make sure the website can't go down? How are you going to make sure that the only thing that device is running is the web browser, and that the only page it's allowed is the one to your app?
For my friend's art project? I'm not gonna care about any of that. (Not _quite_ true, I'll "care" about the webserver part by making it an HTML5 offline app - mostly to remove any chance that webserver problems make my phone ring while I'm asleep or out drinking).
You're inventing requirements which, while no doubt genuinely part of the TSA's requirements, go way beyond my single simple requirement as discussed.
Your friend's art project is not what we're discussing.
"You're inventing requirements which, while no doubt genuinely part of the TSA's requirements, go way beyond my single simple requirement as discussed."
I am not; as you yourself admitted, these are likely part of the TSA requirements, which is what we're discussing.
Sure, except this subthread starts out with a response from me to which you're objecting saying:
'If the only requirement is "an arrow that randomly points left or right when you tap the screen" - I suspect _anybody_ who reads HN could whip up a provably-correct solution in under 30 mins just using html and javascript.'
In the context of the proposal to do this in HTML/Javascript, I've been explicitly discussing a obviously oversimplified single requirement - not the "likely" requirements for the TSA project about which we can only make assumptions, since we've not seen them.
Sorry if we've been talking at cross purposes here.
