The Geek Gathering
Osijek, 11.10.2013 - 13.10.2013
What did we Learn/Hear about?
Couple of things:
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Open Source
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Big data
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Mobile UX/UI/Architecture
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Mobile development tehniques
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Mobile development process/tools
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Desktop development love
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Graph Database (Neo4j)
Open Source
Even hardware is going open source
Fast/cheap prototyping is possible with 3d printers
The buzzword is crowdsourcing
Can 2e opensource and how?
"Keep the unique part closed and OS the rest."
Big data
Big data (three V-s):
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volume (“billions of billions”)
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velocity (analysis in real time)
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variety (problem of data structure, no standardized data delivery protocol)
No single solution
BIG DATA (2)
Big insight
Perception (visualization)
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"In Detroit, amongst the most segregated cities in America, 8 Mile Road serves as a sharp racial dividing line"
Mobile UX/UI
Questions we should be asking ourselves when developing a mobile app:
1) What is the user doing
Car key example - focus on the problem, decrease complexity
2) What is the user doing right now
Identify the users' situation
Example - Croatia airlines web check-in
MOBILE UX/UI
User perspective
- Why are you making me do this?
- Don’t make me think!
Programmers perspective
- An app is not a (just a) smaller web page!
- Go the extra mile
- Degrade gracefully
MOBILE ARCHITECTURE
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Mobile development tehniques
3 approaches:
1. Full native
2. Web applications/frameworks
3. Hybrid native (Embarcadero, Xamarin)
So what's the difference? Is the difference important?
Depends :)
You need native if:
a) you can't access all the phone sensors and you really need them
b) you're doing cool transitions/transformations (lots of rendering)
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MOBILE DEVELOPMENT 'GUIDELINEs'
An app is as good as its programmer
Non-developers mostly consider an app native if there is a slide-in left menu with not "hiccups" in open/close transitions
What does your team already know and what are the clients needs?
Native development (+)
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full access to hardware
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excellent performances
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gain new stuff each time the OS updates
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results in cool and smooth apps
NATIVE DEVELOPMENT (-)
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you have to do it for each platform separately
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requires device specific programming
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a lot of attention needs to be pointed to architecture
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usually requires a more experienced developer
Web applications/frameworks (+)
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Sencha, PhoneJS, jQMobile, PhoneGap...
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develop once for all platforms (almost)
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steeper learning curve
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cool web-kit transformations
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easier maintenance
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develop using one language
WEB APPLICATIONS/FRAMEWORKS (-)
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poor performances
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limited access to hardware (or complicated)
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not all features can be developed in a framework
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might get complicated!
Hybrid native (+)
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access to hardware better than with Mobile web apps
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excellent performances
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better suport for native functions
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develop once for all platforms (almost)
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easier maintenance
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develop using one language
Hybrid native (-)
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support for native functions dependent on the "manufacturer"
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either you can do more but with extra effort for different platforms (Xamarin) or you're limited in what you can acutally do (Embarcadero)
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we haven't seen an app that uses "2e languages" (PHP/Java)
So what's the conclusion for 2e?
- PhoneGap supports enough hardware options
- Mostly simple/fast animations/transitions
- We already know the languages
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Judging by the current user needs/requests, Mobile "Web development" is the way to go
Mobile development process/tools
(From the guys that built CodeAnywhere, Appcurious and Spotie)
Collaboration tools
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e-mail :/
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BaseCamp ->Jira, hipchat
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skype, google hangout
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Trello
trello
( https://trello.com/b/nV9rkC0W/tasks )
HOW DOES PROFICO USE TRELLO?
each project has 2 Trello boards:
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Project development board
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Project QA board
Boards contain:
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small tasks
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UI and logic separated
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QA board has typical QA process lists
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reports generated by internal QA and clients QA
DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
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BitBucket private repositories
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SourceTree / IDE
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XCode
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IntelliJ IDEA Android IDE
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mlopatkin/android log viewer
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Crashlytics
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Fiddler
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TestFlight
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Prediction.io
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Bunch of phones and tablets
CRASHLYTICS
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CRASHLYTICS
easy integration
errors caching
full trace
hardware info
analytics
Android + iOS
INSTABUG
Testflight
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Fiddler
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PREDICTION.IO
"PredictionIO is an open source machine learning server for software developers to create predictive features, such as personalization, recommendation and content discovery."
Desktop development love
Graph DB and neo4j
NOSQL - Not Only SQL
Why?
RDBMS: Relationships part of the fixed schema
Graph: Relationships are part of the data
"Relational database is good at calculating the avg. age of the people in this room, a graph database is good at telling me who’s the person most likely to buy me a beer."
Graph DB 101
NO: not for charts & diagrams, or vector artwork
YES: for storing data that is structured as a graph
( linked lists, trees)
graphs are the general-purpose data structure
Two Ways to Work with Neo4j
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Embeddable on JVM (can use Spring mapping)
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Server with REST API
AnD the queries?
Combination of SQL and ASCII art
Graph example
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Query example
START andreas=node:People(name = 'Andreas') #index
MATCH andreas-[:knows]-(friends)-[:knows]-new_friends
WHERE new_friends.age>18
RETURN new_friends
A 2e related example:
Questions?
The Geek Gathering
By Andrija Jambrović
The Geek Gathering
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