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I see no reason why someone should limit shimself to such a narrow field ("iOS" in this case). You shouldn't limit yourself even for "Mobile"... I mean, you're

by zura 12y ago

I see no reason why someone should limit shimself to such a narrow field ("iOS" in this case). You shouldn't limit yourself even for "Mobile"... I mean, you're an engineer, you solve tasks, no matter if it is iOS related, Android, mobile in general or desktop...

lorenzk 12y ago
The reason is marketing. If your website sells you as the perfect fit for everything from embedded systems to web apps to iOS to Android, you are going to have a hard time to stick out in any pile of candidates-for-our-next-project. If however you wrote a book on iOS development, have a few dozen in-depth articles on Objective-C and Swift on your blog and can refer to a handful of your apps in the app store, you will at least be on top of the (lucrative) pile of candidates-for-someones-next-iOS-project.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "I see no reason why someone should limit shimself to such a narrow field" For one person building and maintaining an app to a high standard on just one platform consumes all of your time. If you start developing it on another platform the first platform will suffer.
- huhtenberg 12y ago
  Not really, no. Building a high-quality app, from scratch is indeed time consuming and generally a full-time affair for a single person. However maintaining it afterwards is significantly less effort as is replicating it to another platform. Latter is not a trivial effort by any means, but it is still much less time consuming than writing an original, because you can readily recycle (a) code (b) ideas (c) supporting infrastructure such as website, support pipeline, etc.
  - gabrielhauber 12y ago
    I agree. SongSheet on iOS is consuming all my time right now, but 6 months from now I'm sure I'll be spending time doing other things (porting SongSheet to other platforms or even developing other applications).
- dcarmo 12y ago
  This. I'm an iOS developer and only working and learning new things in the field consumes all my time. I can't image how would I start working on different technology (say node.js, which is something I want to) without impacting on my iOS learning curve.
  - jbigelow76 12y ago
    Ignoring the more generic point the gp poster made, if you want to learn Node but not sacrifice expertise on iOS why not identify a mobile app that requires a server side component and do that in Node. That way you still feel like you are working towards a singular goal of doing app development.
gabrielhauber 12y ago
Hi zura, You're right. (Although I can imagine some scenarios in which someone might spend most of their working life in one particular domain, and that's ok). Right now it is taking all my time to build and support this app. I doubt it will be all I will be doing 6 months from now. I have never limited myself long-term to only one platform: I've developed in Java for many years. I've developed applications for Windows. For Symbian. Web apps. And so on. I always like new challenges :) With SongSheet itself I plan on expanding it beyond iOS once I feel comfortable enough with how it is doing on that platform. I don't want to spread myself too thin right now, however - I'm not the best of multitaskers.
- stefan_kendall3 12y ago
  I'm doing an android port of my app right now. Very little code (aside from functional code) is re-usable. The view model is incredibly different. In a few cases, it's a lot better. In most cases, it's significantly worse. It just seems to take longer to do everything.
pjmlp 12y ago
The problem is that any of those fields is very complex. Taking iOS as example, one can specialize on the UI frameworks, audio, networking, HTTP, 2D, 3D (OpenGL, SceneKit, ...), layouts, UNIX layer ... It is almost impossible to master the whole OS stack. Now multiply this for all fields you might target. This is why code written by many consultants, tend to be "just to get stuff done", as there is so much one can learn when jumping from field to field. If one decides to specialize, it can be a good when in high demand, but also a problem to switch field when the demand is gone.

by zura 12y ago

lorenzk 12y ago

The reason is marketing. If your website sells you as the perfect fit for everything from embedded systems to web apps to iOS to Android, you are going to have a hard time to stick out in any pile of candidates-for-our-next-project. If however you wrote a book on iOS development, have a few dozen in-depth articles on Objective-C and Swift on your blog and can refer to a handful of your apps in the app store, you will at least be on top of the (lucrative) pile of candidates-for-someones-next-iOS-project.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "I see no reason why someone should limit shimself to such a narrow field" For one person building and maintaining an app to a high standard on just one platform consumes all of your time. If you start developing it on another platform the first platform will suffer.

huhtenberg 12y ago
Not really, no. Building a high-quality app, from scratch is indeed time consuming and generally a full-time affair for a single person. However maintaining it afterwards is significantly less effort as is replicating it to another platform. Latter is not a trivial effort by any means, but it is still much less time consuming than writing an original, because you can readily recycle (a) code (b) ideas (c) supporting infrastructure such as website, support pipeline, etc.
- gabrielhauber 12y ago
  I agree. SongSheet on iOS is consuming all my time right now, but 6 months from now I'm sure I'll be spending time doing other things (porting SongSheet to other platforms or even developing other applications).
dcarmo 12y ago
This. I'm an iOS developer and only working and learning new things in the field consumes all my time. I can't image how would I start working on different technology (say node.js, which is something I want to) without impacting on my iOS learning curve.
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  Ignoring the more generic point the gp poster made, if you want to learn Node but not sacrifice expertise on iOS why not identify a mobile app that requires a server side component and do that in Node. That way you still feel like you are working towards a singular goal of doing app development.

gabrielhauber 12y ago

Hi zura, You're right. (Although I can imagine some scenarios in which someone might spend most of their working life in one particular domain, and that's ok). Right now it is taking all my time to build and support this app. I doubt it will be all I will be doing 6 months from now. I have never limited myself long-term to only one platform: I've developed in Java for many years. I've developed applications for Windows. For Symbian. Web apps. And so on. I always like new challenges :) With SongSheet itself I plan on expanding it beyond iOS once I feel comfortable enough with how it is doing on that platform. I don't want to spread myself too thin right now, however - I'm not the best of multitaskers.

stefan_kendall3 12y ago
I'm doing an android port of my app right now. Very little code (aside from functional code) is re-usable. The view model is incredibly different. In a few cases, it's a lot better. In most cases, it's significantly worse. It just seems to take longer to do everything.

pjmlp 12y ago

The problem is that any of those fields is very complex. Taking iOS as example, one can specialize on the UI frameworks, audio, networking, HTTP, 2D, 3D (OpenGL, SceneKit, ...), layouts, UNIX layer ... It is almost impossible to master the whole OS stack. Now multiply this for all fields you might target. This is why code written by many consultants, tend to be "just to get stuff done", as there is so much one can learn when jumping from field to field. If one decides to specialize, it can be a good when in high demand, but also a problem to switch field when the demand is gone.