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DancinJack
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sat Feb 10, 2018 12:48 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
... :lol: No matter what this page might tell you, Genero Mobile apps are not both native and beautiful. If you go the native route, the Android app will look like some Ice Cream Sandwich holdover. Instead, the guy that got this thing off the ground before me chose to go HTML/CSS/JS for the front end and it was kludgy, especially on Android. But it looked decent, at least.


lol yeah considering there is a picture of emulated ICS on there, I'm not gonna trust their apps are native and beautiful in 2018. Also this.
Genero wrote:
Native and cross-platform – unique!

DO THEY KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?

Have you guys thought about going the native route? I've built a few fairly complex Android apps natively and it's not so bad once you get a hang of all the APIs and libs you need to do stuff properly.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:00 pm

DancinJack wrote:
Have you guys thought about going the native route? I've built a few fairly complex Android apps natively and it's not so bad once you get a hang of all the APIs and libs you need to do stuff properly.

It'd be cool to do. Over my winter break from school I worked through a Udemy course on Android native, and I feel like I picked up on it. Aside from having to import every freakin widget and UI control you want to use, it made pretty good sense. I know basically nothing about iOS native development, though.

Nobody in my group was really aware of it until around May 1, but apparently corporate-wide they've settled on Xamarin for all mobile projects. Mine is apparently one of the last apps to get ported. Xamarin Forms was an easy choice because it let me recreate a couple years of Genero Mobile dev work in about 6 months. I was already familiar with C# and XAML. I have a feeling that nobody is going to be in a hurry to order a second (and third) rewrite, so it'll be Xamarin for the time being. I've done a lot of platform-specific coding in the last few weeks, mostly writing dependency services and custom renderers for Xamarin Forms and it's not too tough.

I wish Forms would init faster on Android, though. Even on my Pixel 2 I get a plain white screen for around 4 seconds before it even tries to read the local DB and spin up the app. Too bad my MSDN license doesn't cover VS 2017 Enterprise—AOT compilation FTW.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
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DancinJack
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:10 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
I wish Forms would init faster on Android, though. Even on my Pixel 2 I get a plain white screen for around 4 seconds before it even tries to read the local DB and spin up the app. Too bad my MSDN license doesn't cover VS 2017 Enterprise—AOT compilation FTW.

Yeah, just throw in a really slow and cool animation :)
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Redocbew
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:44 pm

just brew it! wrote:
The problem is, sometimes marketing's vision of that road is orthogonal to reality. In a well-run organization, marketing and R&D/engineering have a cooperative relationship; when that breaks down, that "road to the future" is littered with so many potholes that it ends up being unusable. :wink:


Sad but true. Sales and marketing also have a habit of blaming problems caused by their business partners on the system, because then they don't have to stress a relationship with their partner. I don't even want to think about the number of times I've given exactly the same answer to exactly the same problem, just because of that.

Developers, managers, and marketing types alike also need to read The Mythical Man-Month. Sadly, it is still just as relevant today as when it was originally published over 4 decades ago.


Definitely required reading.

We're behind schedule! It's not working! What do we do?!? Hire more people!

Six months later...

We're behind schedule! It's not working! What do we do?!? Hire more people!

Etc. Or they try don't even try to hire more people, and just expect everyone to work more. That's probably even worse.
Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and you won't hear them coming.
 
DancinJack
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:48 pm

Redocbew wrote:
Etc. Or they try don't even try to hire more people, and just expect everyone to work more. That's probably even worse.

IME this is what usually happens.
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just brew it!
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:05 am

whm1974 wrote:
I'm wondering how many extra courses I will have to take in order to reach my goals?

I suggest not looking at it from a "how many courses do I need to take" or "how many languages do I need to learn" point of view. There isn't some magic line you cross and suddenly you're a "real software developer". The coursework should give you a solid foundation, and you do need to know enough about different languages' strengths and weaknesses to know when they are appropriate/inappropriate for a given application; but passing the classes and learning the languages is only half of the battle.

The best way to learn how development happens in the real world is to start developing code. With all the cheap hardware and free development tools available, you shouldn't be waiting for your formal coursework to start.

Like any profession (and especially the tech-related ones), it's a life-long learning experience. I'm still learning new things about software development nearly every day, and I haven't set foot in a classroom in over 3 decades.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:23 am

DancinJack wrote:
Redocbew wrote:
Etc. Or they try don't even try to hire more people, and just expect everyone to work more. That's probably even worse.

IME this is what usually happens.

Yeah I've seen that show too, in a situation I was part of a few years back. I think the company believed people wouldn't quit because the economy sucked (and even a sh*tty job was better than no job).

About a year later the job market improved, and all the experienced engineers started leaving... the software team, which had seen close to zero turnover for years prior, was decimated. And one of the managers got so fed up with the stress of trying to juggle priorities in the chaos that continued to rain down from above that he agreed to stay at the company only on the condition that he be allowed to demote himself to a staff engineer position. :lol:
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
whm1974
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 11:01 am

just brew it! wrote:
whm1974 wrote:
I'm wondering how many extra courses I will have to take in order to reach my goals?

I suggest not looking at it from a "how many courses do I need to take" or "how many languages do I need to learn" point of view. There isn't some magic line you cross and suddenly you're a "real software developer". The coursework should give you a solid foundation, and you do need to know enough about different languages' strengths and weaknesses to know when they are appropriate/inappropriate for a given application; but passing the classes and learning the languages is only half of the battle.

The best way to learn how development happens in the real world is to start developing code. With all the cheap hardware and free development tools available, you shouldn't be waiting for your formal coursework to start.

Like any profession (and especially the tech-related ones), it's a life-long learning experience. I'm still learning new things about software development nearly every day, and I haven't set foot in a classroom in over 3 decades.

Thanks, I don't know what I would do without you. You have been very helpful.
 
Pancake
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Re: Application development or Help Desk, both?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:49 pm

Redocbew wrote:
Everyone hates marketing, except for the people in marketing. And they're just weird. :P

Why hate anyone? Marketing folk are a breed apart but when you're working out of town they're the ones who'll take you to a strip joint or set you up with some blow, pot or what you want. And who doesn't want a good time when away from home?!?

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