August 2017 – Stephen Adams

Working for Free

As a mobile app developer, I’ve seen many examples where developers get asked about making an app for someone either for free or for equity.

Usually this is an ‘entrepreneur’ with a killer social media app idea, the next Facebook or Twitter and if the mobile app developer doesn’t want to work on this app for free, they are going to regret it when they make it big.

Unfortunately what these entrepreneurs don’t seem to realise is that mobile app development is the business that the app developer is in. If they wanted to be in the social media space then they would be developing their own app instead of someone else.

The app developer has also probably had several emails already about the next big social media app that they should be apart of before it goes massive. For the app the developer these type of apps ideas come and go. Usually never to be heard of again.

Equity and the promise of greatness don’t pay the mortgage.

But is there ever a good argument for building an app for free…..

Well I think there is. You see some apps are not just social media or todo apps. They are apps that are trying to solve a real problem, using mobile technology and all the great benefits it brings to help.

So here’s the list of reasons why I would working on an app for free:

I have the time between full time projects. If I have some time between two projects and then I might decide to provide some help for free
If I feel the app would be helpful to someone, it solves a real problem
If the work isn’t a 3 month build. That’s too long to work for free
If there is a chance in the future that the app will do well

The reasons why I wouldn’t help make an app for free:

It’s the next Facebook
It’s going to be huge according to the entrepreneur
It’s the next Twitter
It’s more than a couple of weeks work

Now a lot of app developers may think that by not helping out on this next great thing that if the app does become big, you’ll be gutted to have missed out. But honestly how many apps are still making it big. Long gone are the days when you made millions from a single app.

Loving Webstorm again

I’ve recently gone back to using Webstorm for my Angular development. I know that Visual Code is very popular at the moment, just look at any conference talks everyone is using VSCode.

So why have I gone back to Webstorm, well I have used is before and really liked it, but the immediacy of VSCode was really impressive, so I had to give it a go. But the other day I watched a great video by Victor Savkin, who was a developer on the Angular framework and now has his own consultancy Nrwl. In this video he shows how he uses Webstorm.

In the video Victor shows how he customizes the look of Webstorm using the Material UI theme, which can be installed via the Plugins section in Webstorm. I decided to give this a go to see what it looks like, and it looks good.

One reason I really like Webstorm is the number of features it comes with by default. While other IDEs have loads of plugins, which WS does have. It comes with so many built in features for example:

Support for a wide number of frameworks including Angular, React, Ember and even Vue
The Navigation and search features are fantastic. Watch the part of Victor’s talk where he shows how he uses bookmarks to navigate around the actual Angular framework
It had built in debugging support so you can step into your code within Webstorm
The code quality tools it has like ESLinting, TSLinting and JSCS all built in
The plugins you can install to enhance WS even more

The main drawback of Webstorm is that it is a paid application, unlike VSCode which is free. But I don’t see it as a drawback, because with a paid application you know they are going to be around for a while and are committed to the application you rely on so much. Also being funded means that JetBrains, the people behind Webstorm, have their own in house dev team who work on new features for WB.

So while there are other IDEs out there some of them free, but I love using Webstorm again. Here are some links to the articles about Victor’s talk on using Webstorm for Angular

Make Webstorm Better with these customisations
Using Webstorm for Building Angular Apps

Using Desk 3

I’ve recently upgraded to the new version of Desk, which is a great desktop app for blogging. Before I was using the previous version, but I decided that it’s time to upgrade.

In version 2 you could setup links to WordPress, Blogger (if you still use this) and Medium. Now in version 3 it’s just for WordPress. I suppose this is because WordPress is the leader in blogs so there is a big market for Desk to just focus on WordPress.

The developer of Desk, John Saddington, has also created an app just for writting to Medium, called MNML, which looks a nice app, but as someone who doesn’t write on just Medium I thought I’d just stick with Desk.

Desk has some nice features, it has full-screen mode, so you can just concentrate on writing and not be distracted by other app, like Twitter or Slack. It also allows you export your posts to either HTML, PDF, Word or Markdown. The Markdown option is useful as then I can take that MD file and add it to Medium if I want to cross post to Medium.

The UI of Desk is really clean and simple, when in the full-screen mode all you have is the editor, without any other windows. In version 3 you now has two side panels that show the list of blog posts you’ve written and all the tags you’ve created as you write. You can now create groups, so if you want to group a series of posts together, maybe you had a series of posts on a theme or you want to group by month then the groups tab is ideal.

I do feel that when upgrading from version 2 to 3 I’ve lost something by not being able to now post to other blogging engines like Medium and Blogger, but if you are a hardcore writter using WordPress then Desk 3 is a great app for you.

Are Mobile Apps Doomed

Photo by Adrien on Unsplash

I recently read an article called ‘Mobile Apps Are Doomed, I Repeat All Mobile Apps Are Doomed’ a very provocative title. In the article the author Rajat Saxena, who is an Android developer, says that if you are planning on releasing your own apps to the app stores then he has news for you, you’ll hardly any downloads. The reason for this is that no one downloads apps anymore. According to him there are only a few apps people use now, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram.

It’s a very interesting article to read, to get a developer who has a few apps in the stores, perspective on how hard it is to make a living or money from the App Store.

Does this mean as mobile app developers we should stop building apps? As the title says, mobile apps are doomed!!!!

Well the author goes on to say he doesn’t think so, instead we should be apps that have more value to the user. Apps that use AI in order to give the user an app that works for them, has great value to that user. And it’s this user engagement that will make you, as an app developer, successful.

I also think there is another reason why app developers shouldn’t give up just because apps don’t sell so well in the App Stores. More and more businesses are developing apps internally for their own business needs. As mobile is now everywhere, businesses are building apps for their staff in order to help them carry out their jobs. I myself have built a number of internal apps.

So if you are either a hybrid or native mobile developer I don’t think it’s a bad time to be an app developer. It’s just that the dream of making it big through the app store is no longer so easy or so common.