Nikola Brežnjak blog - Tackling software development with a dose of humor
Miscellaneou$

Makers vs Consumers – don’t hate, donate

When was the last time you contributed to some open source project? Did you ever even click on that little star on Github? Or, when was the last time you showed support to the people who work for free on these projects that you take for granted and use daily for your (commercial) projects!?

A lot of people in the software development world started saying $hit about the makers of certain open source projects. That is really not the route you want to take as a professional, so please stop it. I really won’t go any deeper than that, because if they don’t understand that that’s not nice/moral/right, then I see no hope for them to ever grow as persons or developers.

If you indeed find something that’s lacking, instead of complaining

make a freaking meaningful pull request!

For all those who are complaining that “it’s hard to keep up with all the change in the web development world with all these new tools and hundred ways of doing the same thing” I only have one thing to say:

You don’t need to jump into every new framework that comes out. However, you do need to (in your chosen field) adapt, grow, or walk away. It’s really not for everyone. If you’re not willing to daily invest time to hone your skills as a developer then I have to conclude that you came into this field for all the wrong reasons!

Below is the awesome video on this topic by the awesome Mattias P Johansson (@mpjme). You should check out his videos, he has a really good series (presented in a fresh and fun way) about JavaScript.

All in all, dear people:

don’t hate, donate!

And, dear makers, don’t get discouraged, because without you these ungrateful consumers will, well, be worthlessly lost…

Miscellaneou$

Friend on a hand

Below is my submission for the Bug writing competition in original Croatian, and in my best attempt to translate to English (fixes are welcome). However, they must have thought I was joking or something, and they didn’t even take a look at it. Anyways, here’s a story with my 1+ year experience with my Fitbit:

English version:

We formed our friendship just before you wrote the article “Me in numbers” in your Bug magazine. That made me happy because you assured me that I’m a successful trend followed, like any real gadget enthusiast.

I wear it on my wrist, and it doesn’t bother me any second of my 8-hour work on my other Friend – Computer, but we won’t talk about him now because after all this isn’t his 5 minutes of fame.

First of all, I wouldn’t want to label him as a mere piece of hardware, because, in a very short period that I own him, he became my Friend Hardware.

Not only does he count the number of steps I make in a day, but he also counts my total sleeping time. His friend Application (which, btw, works great on any worthwhile mobile phone or browser) shows me which period of time I was restless during the sleep, and with this, I can see the quality of my sleep and the time it took me to fall to sleep.

It also allows me to enter the data about the food that I eat, the amount of water that I drink, and my current desired weight. Based on my activity, it calculates how many calories I spend, and how much more would I have to burn to stay in the fitness beast mode – bye bye personal trainers.

Hardware vibration mode wakes me up in the morning at the time allocated in the Application, so that I don’t wake up my child and wife early in the morning at 5 AM when I go for a run before work. Hardware sends me weekly accomplishments via the Application and it shows me how I stack up against my other “living” friends.

My FitBit Flex <3

Original Croatian version:

Mi smo oformili naše prijateljstvo taman prije nego što ste Vi u Bugu imali temu “Ja u brojkama”. To me razveselilo jer ste mi time potvrdili da uspješno pratim trendove kao svaki pravi gadget entuzijast.

Nosim ga oko svog zapešća i ne smeta mi ni trenutka u mojih 8 sati rada za mojim drugim prijateljem Računalom, ali sada nećemo o njemu jer je to ipak njegovih 5 minuta.

Prije svega, ne bih htio da se njega oslovljava samo kao neki obični hardware, jer je on u kratkom roku što ga imam postao moj prijatelj Hardver.

Ne samo što mi mjeri broj koraka koje napravim u danu, već mi mjeri i ukupno vrijeme spavanja. Njegova prijateljica Applikacija (koja, usput budi rečeno, radi na svakom iole spomena vrijednom mobitelu ili browseru) mi omogućuje uvid u period kad sam bio nemiran tokom sna, te time mogu vidjeti kvalitetu sna i vrijeme koje mi je bilo potrebno da zaspim.

Također mi omogućuje da unesem podatke o hrani koju jedem, količini vode koju popijem, te svojoj trenutnoj i željenoj težini. Ovisno o mojoj aktivnosti računa koliko kalorija potrošim, te koliko bi još morao da ostanem u fitness beast modu – bye bye osobni treneri.

Hardver me ujutro budi laganim vibriranjem u vrijeme zadano u Aplikaciji, tako da ne probudim svoje dijete i ženu ujutro u 5 sati kad idem trčati prije posla. Hardver mi preko Aplikacije tjedno šalje email sa pregledom postignuća za prošli tjedan a i prikazuje mi koliko sam dobar u odnosu na druge “žive” prijatelje.

Moj FitBit Flex <3

Oh, btw, the strap broke after more than a year of non-stop usage (showers included), but I bought a cheap replacement on eBay and it’s holding up just fine…

Miscellaneou$

hack.summit() 2016 virtual conference and hackathon

hack.summit() is a virtual event for developers presented by Pluralsight which will take place “on the wire” on February 22nd-25th, 2016.

This years’ hack.summit() holds three titles:

  • The largest virtual conference in history
  • The largest programming conference in history
  • The largest hackathon in history

and it has some really interesting speakers like programming language creators, open-source contributors, and thought leaders like:

  • JON SKEET – #1 answerer on StackOverflow
  • KENT BECK – Creator of Extreme Programming, creator of TDD
  • DAVID HEINEMEIER HANSSON – Creator of Ruby on Rails
  • JOEL SPOLSKY – Co-founder and CEO of StackOverflow, founder of Trello
  • YEHUDA KATZ – Ember.js author, Rails Core contributor
  • TOM CHI – Creator  of Google Glass
  • BRIAN FOX – Inventor of GNU Bash Shell
  • ORION HENRY – Founder of Heroku
  • ROD VAGG – Node.js Technical Chair and Core Committer
  • and many others…

On top of that, there will be a virtual hackathon on February 20th-21st. One can compete alone or in a team. The prize pool is also worth mentioning 150k$ times :).

This should definitely be interesting so make sure you check it out if you’re into these kind of things…

Miscellaneou$

57th SQL/DEV user group meeting about refactoring and transpilers

I attended our local Microsoft community user group meeting which was about refactoring and transpilers. It’s full proper title (on Croatian) was 57. sastanak SQL/DEV UG Čakovec-Varaždin.

This was 57th meeting in a row, and the presenter Nikola Begedin had two awesome topics (with few notes I took):

Principi i konvencije u refaktoriranju koda (Principles and conventions in code refactoring)

57devug_1

There are typical problems in every code with typical fixes for each of these problems. So, it’s useful to know them in order to be able to detect them early in the code and fix them before they introduce technical debt.

Few of the principles:

You should look to refactor

  • God objects
  • high churn code
  • bugs – “bugs like company”. If a bug appeared at the same function, then refactor it because it’s obviously too cumbersome and the bug will inevitably manifest itself again

Few of the recommended books:

Korištenje transpilera (using transpilers)

57devug_2

Transpiler is a source to source compiler. What that means is that it’s basically a tool which translates from one language to another.

Transpilers allow us to write modern JavaScript code, to work with modules, use advanced language features (await, async, arrow functions, …), etc.

Some options that we have today are:

Visual studio 2015 supports Gulp task running via Task Runner Explorer.

The point is that we don’t need these but since sooner or later more and more browsers will support these functions and you can use them already today, I don’t see any reason why not to use all the benefits that they offer.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/679276361492598784

Ionic, Pluralsight

How to publish the app to the Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store

edit: These posts don’t exists in their separate form anymore. Instead, they have been merged into one big post that you can read here. But, in case you want to read them in its original form, make sure to check the book linked below.

The fourth post about Ionic framework for Pluralsight wraps the series in a whole where we showed how to create an application starting with an idea, through creating a prototype and implementing the application using Ionic framework to finally (in this tutorial) publishing it in the stores.

You can see the finished product on the header image and you can check out the application by downloading it from the App Store or Play Store here.

The post is live and you can access it for free here:  How to publish our calculator application to the Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.

This was a series of posts which was intended to teach you how to take advantage of your web development knowledge in building hybrid applications for iOS and Android.

The first tutorial, as you may remember, was all about how to get started with Ionic framework on Mac andWindows. The second tutorial was about how to create a calculator application with Ionic framework by using Ionic Creator for UI. The third tutorial was about how to polish, create icons and splash screen images, add ads, share and test our calculator application.

IonicBook

If by some chance you would like to download a PDF version of these 4 posts you can do so via Leanpub. Yes, you can choose zero as the amount and I promise I won’t take it against you 😉

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask, and please share if you like it.

Breaking News, Ionic

Ionic 1.2 is out!

The team from Ionic announced their new 1.2 version today. This should get you very excited because the things these guys are making are truly praiseworthy.

As they say in the report:

  • it has over 100 bug fixes
  • uses native scrolling by default on all platforms (which means better responsiveness on Android especially)
  • new Slide box component (use the new <ion-slides> tag)
  • support for Windows 10 and Edge, which runs on the new Windows Phone 10 platform
  • if you want to build a mobile website, you’re fully and officially encouraged to do so (not just an app for the app store). As many of you know, this was not the case so far.
  • new <ion-input> tag
  • dropping support for the raw HTML and CSS versions of Radio and Checkbox, instead you’ll have to use directives <ion-radio> and <ion-checkbox>
  • better integration with Cordova plugins in terms of better console log error output
  • Ionic Native
  • …

You can read the full report on their blog post: http://blog.ionic.io/announcing-ionic-1-2/.

Ionic, Pluralsight

How to polish, create icons and splash screen images, add ads, share and test our calculator application

In my third tutorial about Ionic framework for Pluralsight, I’m going to show you how to:

  • polish,
  • create icons and splash screen images,
  • add ads,
  • share and test our calculator application

The post is live and you can access it for free here:  How to polish, create icons and splash screen images, add ads, share and test our calculator application.

Btw, if you’re wondering where is the main image from, it’s actually from a landing page of the published apps (we’ll show you how to do that for both Play Store and App Store in the next tutorial), and you can take a look at it here: SuperSimple Calculator.

This will be a series of posts which will teach you how to take advantage of your web development knowledge in building hybrid applications for iOS and Android.

The first tutorial, as you may remember, was all about how to get started with Ionic framework on Mac andWindows. The second tutorial was about how to create a calculator application with Ionic framework by using Ionic Creator for UI.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask, and please share if you like it.

Ionic, Pluralsight

How to create a calculator application with Ionic framework by using Ionic Creator for UI

edit: the old link is not working anymore and all four posts have now been merged into one huge post: Ionic Framework: A definitive 10,000 word guide.

In my second tutorial about Ionic framework for Pluralsight, I’m going to show you how to create a calculator application with Ionic framework by using Ionic Creator for UI.

The post is live and you can access it for free here: How to create a calculator application with Ionic framework by using Ionic Creator for UI.

The first tutorial, as you may remember, was all about how to get started with Ionic framework on Mac andWindows. This will be a series of posts which will teach you how to take advantage of your web development knowledge in building hybrid applications for iOS and Android.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask, and please share if you like it.

Ionic, Pluralsight

My new post about Ionic on Pluralsight

I haven’t posted in three weeks now, but there’s a good reason for it – I was preparing a post for Pluralsight on the topic of Ionic. This will be a series of posts which will teach you how to take advantage of your web development knowledge in building hybrid applications for iOS and Android.

I’m super excited that the first  post is now live (I have additional 3 in the queue) and you can check it out here: How to get started with Ionic framework on Mac and Windows.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask, and please share if you like it.

Miscellaneou$

Ekobit DevArena X 2015

Post moved here: http://www.nikola-breznjak.com/blog/miscellaneou/ekobit-devarena-10-2015/

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