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Justin and Jason discuss some technical issues of the Titanium programming model, the seductive power of the two week estimate, using CSS3 with WebKit, Titanium’s pricing model, the potential fallout of the recent Facebook disgruntlement, AppIgnite’s status and Jason’s focus on solidifying the kernel, balancing code purity with pragmatism, diversifying risk with multiple clients, when VC funding makes sense and when it doesn’t, scaling beyond early adopters, why codeless.org doesn’t get it right, getting started as a software
developer by picking a niche, the new editing technology in Google Docs, why Google Spreadsheets is slow, Justin’s love affair with his iPad, how your office chair is killing you and why bad things happen when you spit in the face of mother nature.
Dear TechZing, how I missed thee!
I hope Jason gets his ISP/connection sorted out, I think the poor connection made him a little cranky on the last show; I liked it actually, I KNEW Jason had a “bad-ass” side to him j/k 🙂
Since I’ve caught up with your podcast I just wanted to say a few things:
1: “Pluggio”: Whatever the pronunciation, is a MUCH better name, and you have the .COM! Yes it does position you away from being a “tweet-only” service which is also a plus. I’m happy to hear you’re still moving forward with that and getting more clients/users… nice.
2. Welcome to Macland! As I prior longtime PC guy myself that made the switch, I’m happy to hear you’ve joined the party! It’s funny, the first “problem” I had was what text/code editor to use as well! I was actually using a little $20 app called “EditPlus” on the PC, then I started missing it bad after the switch.
It’s true that all Mac devs swear by Textmate, I use it exclusively too now, but it does take some getting used to since it doesn’t have built in stuff like a FTP client for example. That was really bizarre to me… have you seen/tried ExpanDrive? That should suit you well…
Now that you’re a Mac dev, you’ll be coding in Python before long; PHP is for PC script-kiddies. j/k :p
3. One thing about Flex. It’s a big pain in the a$$… you’re better off mastering/using your own framework/codebase. Write everything as you would normally do in AS3… if you want to make an AIR app, you don’t need to use “Flex”, simply target the AIR Classes and compile your AS3 project as an AIR app. Flex has a terrible way of forcing you to do it “their way”, as long as you’re happy with their base-components, you’re fine — but it you’re wanting even just a little customization, you’re in for alot of headache. So if you’re wanting to “knock something out” quickly, like a protoype, then fine… but most Flashers I know write and built their own components etc… I know I do.
4. Appignite! Wow, I don’t envy you trying to pull off a product like that. Why? Because “wizard builder” applications like the one you describe are VERY hard to get done right. Why? Too many variables, by variables I mean “use case instances”. You will find yourself trying to account for every possible use case and outcome, and at the same time, trying to make it usable by a layperson. Not easy, since with every additional level of “dynamism” you are adding a greater level of complexity. It’s not linear… I’m only saying this because I worry about you and I don’t want you to go mad or get disillusioned… it’s a f**king huge undertaking 🙂
5. I don’t know who is giving Jason a hard time with abusive emails etc. all I can say is that’s what happens when you “put yourself out there” on the big-bad-interwebs…. there’s always gonna be a few haters 🙂 Don’t let it stress you…
On that note, let me say CHEERS once again and thank you for the shows.
Another great show!
I completely agree with you, we’re living very “unnaturally”. That’s the dark side of science and tech, that our biology is not adapting fast enough on its own to the changes we’re introducing.
Beyond the posture problems and such, wearing shoes also isolates the body from the ground, cutting off electric circulation. When you feel stressed, tired or nervous, especially for no particular reason, try walking barefoot on grass. Showering is another solution.
I also have this completely unscientific theory that fear of heights is partially due to continuously looking at nearby objects (reading, monitors, TVs, etc) and not exercising the eyes enough looking at far away objects. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but at some level I think it’s related to the loss of depth perception over long distances, now that we don’t have to hunt any more…
Btw, does mashAPI clash with AppIgnite at all? They sounded sorta similar to me.
I agree with @Emrah, mashAPI and AppIgnite do sound similar. I can’t wait for the mashAPI dog-and-pony show, and I’m looking forward to alpha testing AppIgnite. I’ve got a friend who has a pet sitting business and is using a web app (that he’s not real happy with) it schedules pet-sits and assigns pet-sits to employees. He needs something more robust, perhaps notifications, billing etc. I’m anxious to put AppIgnite to the test and see if we can mock-up a prototype. Oh and thanks for the Shout-out. PS, lurve me some Pluggio, I tell Tweeps about it all the time! -Neville
I agree with @Emrah, mashAPI and AppIgnite do sound similar. I can’t wait for the mashAPI dog-and-pony show, and I’m looking forward to alpha testing AppIgnite. I’ve got a friend who has a pet sitting business and is using a web app (that he’s not real happy with) it schedules pet-sits and assigns pet-sits to employees. He needs something more robust, perhaps notifications, billing etc. I’m anxious to put AppIgnite to the test and see if we can mock-up a prototype. Oh and thanks for the Shout-out. PS, lurve me some Pluggio, I tell Tweeps about it all the time! -Neville
Hey guys, enjoying the podcast but only halfway through (my commute to work is only 45mins!).
One thing I wanted to say to JV was regarding his work on Swarm on the iPad using a webview. You mentioned using CSS3 and some of the vendor specific properties to get rounded-corners etc, and Jason mentioned perhaps trying the native drawing API to speed things up. I wanted to ask if you had tried HTML5? I don’t know for sure but I GUESS the iPad supports HTML5 (considering the great lengths Apple are going to avoid Flash).
So assuming HTML5 is well supported I wonder if you’ve taken a look at using canvas to draw your sprites? SVG is also possible in HTML5 and would be ideal as it’s scalable and generally much more useful that a raw bitmap from the canvas tag – but I’m not sure SVG is supported very well yet.
Also, you mentioned having the “prediction of possible moves” thing slowing down the app if it highlighted a lot of moves. You made it highlight moves one at a time to ease the strain. I wonder if clever use of HTML5’s “web workers” would help you there? Kind of like little process threads off your main script! It wouldn’t necessarily reduce the processing power required to render stuff but it would allow parallel JS threads and so avoid any bottlenecks. Check out: http://robertnyman.com/2010/03/25/using-html5-web-workers-to-have-background-computational-power/
I’d like to hear what you think about this.
Alex
On the subject of vector rendering in the browser using Canvas… have you seen Raphael? http://raphaeljs.com/ It’s pretty sweet…
Another entertaining show I listened to on a hike yesterday afternoon. 🙂
Justin, I think Swarm is going to look fantastic on the iPad. One of my colleagues brought one to work two days ago and I have to admit the display is amazingly crisp and fast. Games and videos and all were very fluid. I was surprised by the weight though and yes it would be tiring to hold an iPad with one hand for a long period of time. For me it would be rough as I have tendinitis in both harms and wrists (yep too much mousing and clicking over the years). So I would love a lighter iPad with maybe less battery time if this was the trade-off.
I am not sure if you have looked at the JS Emile framework (http://mir.aculo.us/2010/01/28/emile-js-talk-video-slides/) for animation.
You could mix it with Titanium. Oh btw maybe the Titanium guys could offer both of you a free one year support deal since you mention them just about every episode!
On CodeLess, I think that the visual logic builder pattern has shown not to really work or scale in terms of app complexity. The concept has been tried for about 20 years or so. Every few years a new entrant tries the approach and quietly disappear after a year or so. The fact is if you’re a non-developer these tools become too complex quickly, and if you’re are a developer you quickly end up in visual spaghetti as you add some minor complexity. Not to mention that devs prefer code not visual logic designers.
I don’t see AppIgnite facing the same types of issues since the approach is more based on defining components of an app. I also liked the idea to be able to either use wizards or the corresponding configuration files. Also allowing non-developers and developers or designers to collaborate on different aspects of an app would be really nice. This could allow a non-dev to sketch out an app, then engage a dev or a designer to augment the app using components or skins.
Philippe (@techarch)
@Philippe Monnet Yep, that’s exactly how I envision AppIgnite to be used as well. 😉