5 ms·

Totally agreed. As a freelance, it's really scary to invest time into a full stack of technologies. I should start a discipline to pick tools and not look back

Totally agreed. As a freelance, it's really scary to invest time into a full stack of technologies. I should start a discipline to pick tools and not look back before n years went by. Maybe n = 2 or 3 ? (right now, I'm Objective-C - not even Swift - for native iOS, Ember for client, Rails for API/back-office and Heroku for deployment)

wooptoo 10y ago
Swift should be mature enough by now for development. Or start with version 3 when it comes out.
KurtMueller 10y ago
Honest question: How's that tech stack working out for you? What if you want to dev an Android mobile app? Have you looked at React Native at all? Thanks.
- matwood 10y ago
  React native was not mature enough the last time I had to solve this problem. After writing and maintaining native clients in both Android and iOS for years, I decided to try something different. SPA app + Cordova + writing custom, native plugins for performance has worked out pretty well. Some things in the UI are not as fast as I would like, but develop/test/release cycle is so much faster (web, ios, android released nearly at the same time). It does help that I can write native Android or native iOS (obj-c/swift) to handle the plugins where needed. Cordova can also be a bit of a mess to deal with sometimes, but it is improving.
  - KurtMueller 10y ago
    Another question... how do you like Ember for your web apps? :)
    - dirtyhenry 10y ago
      I still have a love/hate relationship with Ember (and other JS frameworks). They are simultaneously very powerful and quite restrictive. My most recent example: there's still no common and fast&easy way to integrate Google Analytics in a project. It takes some (reasonable) effort, like 1 hour for research and implementation, when it takes 10 minutes on good old server generated HTML/JS.
  - dirtyhenry 10y ago
    I also gave up on frameworks like Cordova because (1) who knows if they'll still be maintained in a couple of years, (2) how reactive/efficient can they be to offer access to new features from the native iOS and SDK apps. I feel like pretty much anything Cordova is really good at, you can do it with a webapp.
- dirtyhenry 10y ago
  I sort of gave up on Android development by now. My mindset is iOS first if I need an app. And then consider a good webapp (with Ember then) if I want to extend to all smartphone users. If I needed a native Android development, I would try to find a partner able to code it, I wouldn't do it myself.

wooptoo 10y ago

Swift should be mature enough by now for development. Or start with version 3 when it comes out.

KurtMueller 10y ago

Honest question: How's that tech stack working out for you? What if you want to dev an Android mobile app? Have you looked at React Native at all? Thanks.

matwood 10y ago
React native was not mature enough the last time I had to solve this problem. After writing and maintaining native clients in both Android and iOS for years, I decided to try something different. SPA app + Cordova + writing custom, native plugins for performance has worked out pretty well. Some things in the UI are not as fast as I would like, but develop/test/release cycle is so much faster (web, ios, android released nearly at the same time). It does help that I can write native Android or native iOS (obj-c/swift) to handle the plugins where needed. Cordova can also be a bit of a mess to deal with sometimes, but it is improving.
- KurtMueller 10y ago
  Another question... how do you like Ember for your web apps? :)
  - dirtyhenry 10y ago
    I still have a love/hate relationship with Ember (and other JS frameworks). They are simultaneously very powerful and quite restrictive. My most recent example: there's still no common and fast&easy way to integrate Google Analytics in a project. It takes some (reasonable) effort, like 1 hour for research and implementation, when it takes 10 minutes on good old server generated HTML/JS.
- dirtyhenry 10y ago
  I also gave up on frameworks like Cordova because (1) who knows if they'll still be maintained in a couple of years, (2) how reactive/efficient can they be to offer access to new features from the native iOS and SDK apps. I feel like pretty much anything Cordova is really good at, you can do it with a webapp.
dirtyhenry 10y ago
I sort of gave up on Android development by now. My mindset is iOS first if I need an app. And then consider a good webapp (with Ember then) if I want to extend to all smartphone users. If I needed a native Android development, I would try to find a partner able to code it, I wouldn't do it myself.