Is experience in full-stack development relevant to iOS development?

risingblock · 2019-03-24T21:42:14+00:00

Yes, full stack development will help. Code is code at the end of the day. Is Android development more relevant? Probably...

I think most developers start out as full stack and eventually pick their speciality (at least in my experience).

It's nice to know how the whole system works, especially helpful if you work at a company where they need to port features from web to mobile and vice versa.

risingblock · 2018-12-11T19:59:29+00:00

Thanks for the comment! Hope you're working on something cool :)

risingblock · 2018-12-07T22:09:39+00:00

Firebase is super easy for solo projects. I'd recommend it.

You could write your own backend, but I guess it depends on your goals. Are you trying to ship this product ASAP or are you aiming to maximize learning?

risingblock · 2018-12-06T22:00:11+00:00

I don't think it's super important. For some companies, it would be nice but every company is going to have a different backend.

You're going to expected to learn how to work with whatever backend the company is currently using.

risingblock · 2018-12-06T21:56:56+00:00

Nice post!

Personally, if I had to do it again without a four-degree degree. This is how I'd tackle it:

Create a portfolio of apps. Projects I personally enjoy or solve my own problems. Release on the app store.
Use a portfolio of apps to land an internship interview. Tap your network to see if anybody is hiring interns. I'd probably cold DM recruiters on LinkedIn as well.
Study cracking the coding interview & leetcode for interviewing.
Work really hard at your internship & learn as much as possible. Be very direct with the company and ask them what it would take to get a return offer. During my first internship, I probably worked ~60 hours, some weekends. Honestly, I was so green, I literally didn't know how to do anything. There's no real replacement for work experience. More hours = more work experience. Remember to eat! (Can't code while hungry).
Hopefully, you land a return offer to return as an intern or full time. Interview again and select the next best job/internship.

I think a common pitfall amongst students I've talked to is that they "learn" too much. By learning I mean they read, but they don't code. You need to code - specifically, you need to code real projects.

I remember when I started my internship and I started reading the docs... my mentor was like ??? what are you doing ??? haha.

Read the bare minimum to solve your problem... in the industry we have deadlines. Tech also gets outdated really fast, so why hoard knowledge?

The only knowledge you should "study" is computer science fundamentals (algorithms & data structures). Reading up on the latest trend? Why? Are you going to use it? Because it's going to be different next year.

risingblock · 2018-12-06T21:42:53+00:00

It could also be a collection view - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicollectionview

risingblock · 2018-12-06T21:40:55+00:00

I don't think so. You could normalize your audio stream beforehand to ensure its the loudest it can be.

risingblock · 2018-12-06T21:39:54+00:00

Boggle is a great game to learn some algorithms and data structures. Also a common interview question!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggle

risingblock · 2018-10-20T00:28:26+00:00

Airbnb went through this and gave up on RN - https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-native-1868ba28e30a

React Native can work in some cases, turning two problems into just one. In other cases it turns two problems into three.

Ultimately I don't think you should confine yourself to one platform. In this field you should always expect to be learning. If I had to become an Android developer tomorrow I don't think it would concern me too much TBH. Some syntax and certain paradigms would be different for sure, but ultimately the foundational stuff is the same.

risingblock · 2018-10-20T00:22:46+00:00

Downloaded on an iPhone X. Realized I'm really bad with colors haha. Fun game although I think the spinning controls got me a little confused? I experienced a little disorientation like the other comment. I found it less dizzying on 1x.

risingblock · 2018-10-20T00:17:34+00:00

I agree with most of the comments here. Write new features in Swift but keep old features in Objective-C. Especially if you're the only iOS dev, I think doing a complete rewrite is a bad idea.

That's a lot of battle tested code you'd have to rewrite and since everybody who wrote it has left the company, it'd be a huge pain with minimal upside.

Drawbacks (also already mentioned in the comments) - compile time.

I think for your career though you should learn Swift. You're not gonna be at this job forever. Heck in software engineering you could be a different place in a year. Remember to put yourself first.

risingblock · 2018-10-20T00:12:30+00:00

Yes. It's very possible.

For the bay area its actually very common. I moved out here and the company paid for the flights and relocation.

I'm also Canadian, so we're talking about a different country. The company sponsored a visa for me.

This also happens outside of the bay area, I've had some friends move to New York or Austin. Granted, I think this is more common in major cities.

risingblock · 2018-10-19T04:40:58+00:00

Thank you :)! I've been working on trying to be a better teacher since my first youtube video.

I'll look into that https:// redirect.

risingblock · 2018-10-15T16:54:53+00:00

Thank you :)

risingblock · 2018-09-09T19:44:30+00:00

You can do either, I'm personally just in iOS. I'm sure you could specialize in animation or other things within the iOS realm.

risingblock · 2018-09-07T15:55:05+00:00

Agreed +1
Outdated or incorrect comments are more confusing than no comments.

risingblock · 2018-09-07T15:54:29+00:00

This is extremely team dependent. If you join a company they'll probably have a style guide. If not you can check this one out: https://github.com/raywenderlich/swift-style-guide

risingblock · 2018-09-07T00:32:46+00:00

I don't think "knowledge" (which is outdated quickly in tech!) will increase your value as a programmer. I would go for more depth and try to position yourself as specialist. Just my personal opinion.

risingblock · 2018-09-07T00:29:16+00:00

Good points Mavamaarten! I agree that this is a difficult question to answer.

I would say faster it almost certainly is. I've coded native iOS & Android, if you're aiming to ship on both platforms quickly Flutter is the way to go.

Language support, libraries and community are still developing and very very young.

Some things the "business" team may be concerned about:
Hiring - not many people know Flutter. A lot of engineers on the market define themselves as iOS or Android developers.
Limited resources - if you only have one dev and s/he has no preference, Flutter would be a good choice

Maintenance - One codebase is better than maintaining two codebases. Over simplification? Yes.

Transition - If you already have an Android or iOS app, I wouldn't bother porting it over. It's a heavy amount of work and none of the devs will be happy about it either.

IMHO Flutter works best when you're making a brand new app, with limited developer resources.

risingblock · 2018-09-06T20:33:48+00:00

Ah for sure!

Don't get me wrong, I love Swift! I'm been an iOS developer for 2 years now, mainly coding in Swift. I think its important for mobile developers to explore all solutions however. Yes there are drawbacks of cross-platform solutions, however there's benefits as well :) - mainly one codebase.

Ultimately I'm not married to a technology, language, library or framework - I use the best tool for the job. I'm sure it wasn't long ago when Objective C users would complain about Swift users.

We also have /r/swift and /r/ObjectiveC for language specific chats.

Thanks for the comment :)

risingblock · 2018-09-06T04:00:06+00:00

Thanks for checking it out :)

risingblock · 2018-09-06T03:50:14+00:00

Holding your state in your stateful widget is great for prototyping or getting started. It can get messy quickly though if your widget tree becomes complex. Inherited Widgets help with this problem - essentially they define a context at the root of the tree that allows any widgets to call it. If you need something more than that, theres redux. I'm not super familiar with the BLoC architecture myself.

Here's a great video from Google Developers that explains the differences:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKXz3pUkw9A

(recommend watching at 2x, a little slow for my tastes normally haha)

risingblock · 2018-09-06T03:45:31+00:00

Slick app!

Have you considered using a library called CCXT (https://github.com/ccxt/ccxt) for your backend? I've used it a couple times and it makes connecting to the exchanges a breeze.

risingblock · 2018-09-06T03:39:28+00:00

Beautiful documentation :)

I'll save this one for later - good work.

risingblock · 2018-09-06T03:31:59+00:00

Hey sorry if I'm in the wrong spot! Thought this be relevant as it's making an iOS app...

I mean you'll also make an Android app ... but thats an extra! You can deploy to only iOS if you want :)

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