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…

#Friend on a #hand #fitbit https://t.co/QiGaU2I4q3

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) January 4, 2016

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…

#hacksummit 2016 #virtual #conference and #hackathon https://t.co/YvMSZ621yh

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) December 28, 2015

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)

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:

• extract temp to query
• tell, don’t ask
• data clump
• decoupling

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:

• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests

Korištenje transpilera (using transpilers)

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:

• Babel
• Google Traceur
• Browserify
• RequireJS

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

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.

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.

How to #publish the #app to the Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store https://t.co/DkFBeTj8yi @ionicframework pic.twitter.com/SjROTSn5OO

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) December 15, 2015

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/.

@ionicframework Awesome Ionic 1.2 is out! Mobile website mode supported! https://t.co/QsdhghpPdP pic.twitter.com/pvFpZVARvg

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) December 10, 2015

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.

How to polish, create #icons and #splash screen images, add #ads, share and test our #ionic #calculator application https://t.co/52k5f1G9CH

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) December 9, 2015

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.

How to create a #calculator application with #Ionic #framework by using Ionic #Creator for UI https://t.co/A7wCaKOunX

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) December 1, 2015

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.

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

I just came home from the ever so slightly awesome Ekobit DevArena X conference. As I usually do, I’ll share my notes that I took in my notebook and a few pictures.

Start your engines

Well, you can’t start a day on an empty stomach, right?

This is how the accreditation looked like:

The accreditation had a handy list of all the presentations on the back side:

As you can see, there were 4 tracks between which you could choose (yes, you could go to any presentation in any of the tracks in a certain timeslot). Chalk n’ Talk presentations are actually a cool thing where they aren’t actual presentations rather something like a round table where the presenter(s) discuss their real life experiences (and the input from the crowd is also highly desirable).

Keynote

• Presenters: Ivan Kardum, Nenad Bakić, Domagoj Pavlešić and Saša Tomičić
• 10th in a row Ekobit DevArena
• A very interesting project called Croatian Makers by Nenad Bakić who was very inspiring and kudos for starting all this
  
• They donated robotical equipment to over 50 schools in Croatia
• Serwantes
• Fantom 3
• Lego Mindstorms – can’t wait to get this for my little girl! Yeah, I know it’s an excuse for me to play with it too 🙂
• He shared a quite intriguing image with us:
  

Modern web application development in Visual Studio 2015

• Presenter: Ivan Popek
• 
• 
• Bower and npm come preinstalled with Visual Studio 2015. I wrote a detailed tutorial for Digital Ocean about Bower if you want to take a look.
• Gulp and Grunt are task runners which offer tools like minification, concatenation, linting, etc…
• Personally, I like Gulp better because of it’s clearer syntax
• Gulp is faster because it uses streams
• Git and Node are also preinstalled by default on VS 2015
• The way you “add” packages for Bower is that you create a bower.json file in the Solution explorer and as soon as you hit Save it installs the listed dependencies. It creates the Dependencies folder and a bower_components folder
• bower install runns automatically after you open up the project
• To add Gulp create a package.json file in the Solution explorer and as soon as you hit Save npm will install it. You can add additional Gulp dependencies the same way.
• To start writing Gulp tasks, create a gulpfile.js and hack on 🙂
• Visual Studio 2015 has a nice TaskRunner explorer where you can run the tasks manually. However, it’s way better to set a “watch” task inside Gulp so that it runs the tasks automatically for you. For example, if you’re using SASS it will compile to CSS automatically on every change to the SASS files. You can set the watch tasks to run after you reoppen the project with Watch -> Bindings->Project open

Clean code is your friend

• Presenters: Bruno Brozović and Antonija Malenica
  
• Technical debt
• Writing code : Reading code = 1 : 10 in terms of time. It’s way better to invest time at the beginning to write “clean code” as it will pay of in the later stages of the project
  
• The boy scout rule – always leave the campground cleaner than you found it
• YAGNI (You ain’t gonna need it) – do not add functionality until deemed necessary
• KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) – Simplicity is better than complexity
• DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) – every piece of knowledge must have single, unambigious, authorative representation within system
• Principle of least surprise – do the least surprising thing
• SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) – a class should have only one reason to change
• Single level of abstraction
• Methods
  • names – detail and descriptive
  • short
  • number of arguments as small as possible (0, 1, 2)
  • SRP
• Comments – you should strive to write selfdocumenting code
• Classes
  • QualitatyClassName (25-30 characters)
  • SRP
  • smaller number of cohesive classes
  • Open Closed Principle – open for extension, closed for modification
• Learning test
• And now, a spectacle! In a room of about 100 people when the question “How many of you are using Unit testing?” was asked only 4 people raised their hands 

Lunch

We’re outsorcing products and services, not people!

• Presenters: Luka Abrus (Five Minutes), Vedran Brničević (Ekobit)
  
• Ekobit started in 1992
  • ALM, BizDataX
• Five minutes needed 7 years to come to the point where 100% of the things they do is on the USA market
• Customer feedback by literally going live from door to door and ask
• Landing pages + AdWords + Sign me up
• Nobody buys enterprise software without a support
• Europe’s problem is language barriers from country to country
• Funny anecdote: when you say to an American that you’re from Croatia: “Oh, yes Dubrovnik – Game of Thrones!”. Also funny one was “oh, you’re just a Russian school of mathematics”. And thus, they believe we are good programmers; designers not so much.
• You need to be willing to hop the plane and go to a meeting at any time
• Five Minutes has currently 12 free spots
• NY Area software developer 150-200$ per hour (jaw-dropping!)
• Quality is everything!
• Put your code to GitHub, designs to Dribble, Behance
• The main problem that both of the presenters expressed was that there are just not enough (quality) developers

Where is this web going?

• Presenters: Domagoj Pavlešić, Ivan Popek, Renato Železnjak, Josip Klarić, Ratko Ćosić
• this was a round table like presentation
  
• Browser as an Operating System
• Microsoft is slowing down the Web standardization
• Too many JS frameworks (you don’t say 😉)
• NO for monolith framework
• Use linting
• Gridster, Selectize, Knockout
• Throw jQuery out
• TypeScript two thumbs up

Automated delivery in Visual Studio 2015

• Presenters: Ognjen Bajić and Ana Roje Ivančić
  
• Build vNext
• 2015 Intentional Extensibility – open source
• Custom build workflows
• Real time output
• Versioning
• Cross-platform build (Win, Mac, Linux)
• Build .NET, Java, Android, iOS
• Ant, CMake, Maven, Xcode Build, Android Build
• Agents, Pools, Queues
• Testing, web performance, load tests

Aurelia – new generation JavaScript framework

• Presenters: Ratko Ćosić and Mario Peroković
  
• AMD
  • modular programming
  • RequireJS
  • CommonJS
  • TypeScript
• SPA
  • chunking
  • templating
  • controllers
• Which framework should I choose?
  
• Durandal -> Aurelia
• JavaScript is a subset of TypeScript which is compiled in ES5. Microsoft is developing along with Anders Hejlsberg (C# creator)
• Angular2 uses TypeScript
•  Every view starts with <template>
• MVVM – model view view-model
• DI – dependency injection
• Parent view models
• Routing
• Screen activation lifecycle
• uses jspm
• jspm install aurelia-http-client
• <input type=”text” value.bind=”firstName” /> and then reference it like ${firstName}
• Debugging
  • compile-spy
  • view-spy

They had a nice additional prize draw for those who asked questions (you get a small paper which you toos in a drawing bowl). I got mine on the last presentation. However, no luck in winning something 🙁

However, as every year, they are giving prizes for the first few people who sign up for the conference. This year I signed up at 6th place, and because of that I got a nice 2 tickets at Terme Tuhelj, and also a nice hoodie with a number 6 🙂

Thanks and hope to see you next year!