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I'm excited to share that Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges is out. It's my first-ever paperback book and one that is free as a PDF for t

I'm excited to share that Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges is out. It's my first-ever paperback book and one that is free as a PDF for the rest of the month[1]. I had worked for years at Uber, first as a mobile engineer, then an engineering manager. Despite being a mobile-first company, I could not shake the feeling that non-mobile engineers and managers consistently underestimated the complexity of large-scale mobile development. I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?". I found myself explaining again and again to PMs, engineers, and stakeholders all the hoops the mobile team needs to jump to ship things in production. How mistakes are very expensive - and thus, we need to ship almost all changes behind feature flags. How the build train means that the changes we make today will take at least 2 weeks to get to prod. How devices being offline is something we need to actively support, and anticipate... and so on. I noticed similar "aha moments" each time. Talking with other mobile engineers in similar environments, they were having similar conversations, and battling similar assumptions on mobile being relatively simple. I had been collecting the numerous challenging areas that I planned to publish as a blog post. After I shared the draft on Twitter[2], I got an unexpected amount of interest in people offering to contribute. The contents became too long for a post, and so this book was born. Several people asked for a paperback version[3], and I decided to create the book in print as well, as I felt the contents warranted it. I hope you find this book useful - both if you're a mobile engineer or if you work with mobile teams. And I'd love to hear any feedback! [1] https://www.mobileatscale.com/#pricing https://www.mobileatscale.com/#pricing [2] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1335305213394251780 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1335305213394251780 [3] https://twitter.com/elevenetc/status/1335595203411972097 https://twitter.com/elevenetc/status/1335595203411972097

serial_dev 5y ago
Thank you for the book, I really love your YouTube channel, very informative!
swyx 5y ago
congrats on publishing! it was SUCH a good read and incredible quality. Absolutely recommend that everyone get it before the free period runs out, and then buy the full edition anyway because it is that good.
fatnoah 5y ago
>I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?". Oh my. As an Engineering leader, I've had this conversation many, many times.
predaking 5y ago
"I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?"." You sold me on the book with this sentence alone. =)
mgkimsal 5y ago
"I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?"." I've heard that before too. Even before getting in to the various engineering issues between different platforms, if you're talking about 'native apps' - things to go in to an app store - specifically apple... that "it's just another front end" line is beyond laughable. The effort involved in simply packaging up a handful of mobile apps for distribution in app stores - between multiple icons, splash screens, basic device testing... is often a level beyond what people who've not worked in mobile have ever had to deal with it - especially internal 'line of business' app folks. I say this as someone who's only done a small number of mobile apps (some angular/ionic years ago), and looking recently, it's only worse.
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kumarm 5y ago
>> I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?". My answer for that usually: "Have you ever noticed any project typically has 90% bugs on frontend?"

serial_dev 5y ago

Thank you for the book, I really love your YouTube channel, very informative!

swyx 5y ago

congrats on publishing! it was SUCH a good read and incredible quality. Absolutely recommend that everyone get it before the free period runs out, and then buy the full edition anyway because it is that good.

fatnoah 5y ago

>I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?". Oh my. As an Engineering leader, I've had this conversation many, many times.

predaking 5y ago

mgkimsal 5y ago

"I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?"." I've heard that before too. Even before getting in to the various engineering issues between different platforms, if you're talking about 'native apps' - things to go in to an app store - specifically apple... that "it's just another front end" line is beyond laughable. The effort involved in simply packaging up a handful of mobile apps for distribution in app stores - between multiple icons, splash screens, basic device testing... is often a level beyond what people who've not worked in mobile have ever had to deal with it - especially internal 'line of business' app folks. I say this as someone who's only done a small number of mobile apps (some angular/ionic years ago), and looking recently, it's only worse.

deleted 5y ago
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kumarm 5y ago

>> I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?". My answer for that usually: "Have you ever noticed any project typically has 90% bugs on frontend?"