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Programming Video What I’m Up To

Now that I’m getting paid to be a developer again…

…it’s time to revive this video that New Relic put out way back in 2011 to promote their application monitoring service.

Titled We Love Developers, it features some of the brightest lights in the industry:

  • Matz: Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the Ruby programming language
  • Guido van Rossum: Creator of the Python programming language
  • Linus Torvalds: Creator of the Linux operating system and the Git version control system
  • DHH: David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework
  • Bill Joy: Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and creator of the vi text editor
  • James Gosling: Lead designer of the Java programming language
  • Sir Tim: Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web
  • Marc Andreesen: Co-creator of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, co-founder of Netscape, co-founder of Andreesen Horowitz
  • Woz: Steve Wozniak, creator of Apple
  • Rasmus Lerdorf: Creator of the PHP programming language
  • The Gu: Scott Guthrie, creator of ASP.NET, Executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI group
  • Sergey Brin: Co-founder of Google
  • Dries Buytaert: Creator of Drupal

At the end of the video, they wanted to use the image of a more “everyman” developer to represent you, their customer. Guessed who they picked:

My photographer friend Adam P. W. Smith (my old business partner; together, we were datapanik software systems and we worked on some pretty interesting projects back in the late ‘90s) took the picture back in August when I was visiting him in Vancouver. I’d arrived a day early for the HackVAN hackathon and was sitting in his kitchen getting some work done when he decided to get a couple of shots. He poured me a glass of scotch, set it on my accordion, which I’d set down on the chair beside me, and staring taking pictures.


In case you were wondering, you can find out more about my new gig in the article titled — appropriately enough — The new gig.

Categories
What I’m Up To

The new gig

I have a new job: I now hold the title of Mobile Software Developer at Financial Information Technologies LLC, which also goes by the name Fintech. My job will be developing Fintech’s mobile app, Lilypad, which is a sales and customer relationship management tool for the alcoholic beverages industry — a $250+ billion market in the U.S. alone, and a $1.4+ trillion market worldwide.

Fintech created the first EFT (electronic funds transfer) payment system for the alcoholic beverages industry in 1991, and in the 18 years that followed, their system gained approval in all 50 states. Since then, they’ve built systems to improve the way alcohol is managed, priced, promoted, ordered, and sold. They’re a “work hard, play hard” place with a reputation for treating their employees well, based on what I’ve seen at their company gatherings.

Lilypad is a scrappy startup that was founded in 2013. Their original application was a tool to help alcohol sales teams in the field, and has since grown to become a system that helps the industry manage the entire sales process. Lilypad’s customers run the gamut from the smallest kitchen-table craft breweries to global conglomerates whose products are everywhere — perhaps even on your shelves at home. The company was acquired by Fintech earlier this year.

Back in September, I posted a cryptic announcement with the “New gig Monday” image shown above. That marked the start of a trial period during which time I worked at Lilypad on a contract basis. They were incredibly cool about accommodating the vacation plans I’d made months before. I worked for the month of September, went to the Philippines for three weeks in October, and then returned to work through to the end of November.

My job was to dive into their mobile app code for both Android and iOS — comprising hundreds of thousands of lines of code written over the past six years by an untold number of coders who came before me, none of whom left behind any notes  — and start fixing, maintaining, and improving it from the moment I set foot in the office. This would be a challenge.

I landed the trial period based on a very particular set of skills that’s hard to find in the Tampa area: mobile app development (and let’s face it, my penchant for self-promotion). I sold those skills based on:

Still, it’s been some time since I wrote production code. The agreement was that if I could prove my coding mettle during the trial period, they’d take me on as a senior mobile developer.

I’ve got to get back to work, so I’ll spare you the details. Besides, you already know how it worked out.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, December 2, 2019)

Every week, dedicated individuals and organizations in around the Tampa Bay do more than just their “day jobs”. They get involved in events where they share their knowledge, make connections and friends, and gather together to build strong tech, entrepreneur, and nerd communities. That’s why I do this every week: I put together a list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events to make sure that they can be found and you can attend them!

Here’s what’s happening in Tampa Bay this week!

This weekly list is posted as a voluntary service to the Tampa tech community. With the notable exceptions of Tampa iOS Meetup and Coders, Creatives and Craft Beer — both of which I run — most of this information comes from Meetup.com, EventBrite, and other local event announcement sites. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the dates and times listed here; if you want to be absolutely sure that the event you’re interested in is actually taking place, please contact the organizers!

Monday, December 2

Tuesday, December 3

Wednesday, December 4

Thursday, December 5

Friday, December 6

Saturday, December 7

Sunday, December 8

Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?

If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


Categories
Humor Programming The Street Finds Its Own Uses For Things

ArnoldC: A programming language based on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie one-liners

Do you like programming? Do you like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? If so, ArnoldC is the programming language for you!

ArnoldC will never make the TIOBE list, but then again, no other programming language is based on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie one-liners! Better still, there’s an ArnoldC syntax highlighting package for Sublime.

Here’s “Hello, World!” in ArnoldC:

IT'S SHOWTIME
TALK TO THE HAND "hello world"
YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED

It compiles down to Java bytecode. Running the program above is as simple as saving it as hello.arnoldc and entering the following on the command line:

java -jar ArnoldC.jar hello.arnoldc
java hello

Find out more about ArnoldC on its GitHub page, and once you’ve been impressed, download it, start coding, and GET TO DA CHOPPA!

Since we’re on the topic of Arnie, enjoy this video:

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Uncategorized

Don’t miss out on RayWenderlich.com’s Black Friday sale!

Here’s your chance to learn mobile development where I learned mobile development, and at a sale price! RayWenderlich.com, the premier mobile developer tutorial site, is having a big Black Friday sale until December 2nd, and you don’t want to miss these bargains…

The offering The price You’ll want this if…
Yearly Plan:
A year’s subscription to the site, which gives you access to all the articles.		 $99 / year
(It’s normally $20/month; you’ll save over $140)

You want a steady stream of tutorials — each one typically an afternoon’s worth of work — on a wide array of movile development topics: iOS/Swift, Android/Kotlin, Unity, Flutter, and server-side Swift.

If you’re just getting started with mobile development, especially cross-platform mobile development, you’ll find this quite useful.
Beginning iOS & Swift Black Friday Bundle:
5 books: iOS Apprentice, Swift Apprentice, Core Data by Tutorials, Data Structures & Algorithms in Swift, and Living by the Code.		 $99.97
(Normally $270 for all the books)

You’re new to iOS development, Swift, or both, and want a deep dive. We’re talking a solid two or three months of serious learning in these five books — think of this bundle as boot camp for self-starters who want to learn iOS development.

You’ll want this is you’re serious about getting an app in the App Store or landing a job doing native iOS development.
Beginning Android & Kotlin Black Friday Bundle:
5 books: Android Apprentice, Kotlin Apprentice, Saving Data on Android, Data Structures & Algorithms in Kotlin, and Living by the Code.		 $99.97
(Normally $270 for all the books)

You’re new to Android development, Kotlin, or both, and want a deep dive. We’re talking a solid two or three months of serious learning in these five books — think of this bundle as boot camp for self-starters who want to learn Android development.

You’ll want this is you’re serious about getting an app in the Play Store or landing a job doing native Android development.
Advanced iOS & Swift Black Friday Bundle:
10 books: SwiftUI by Tutorials, Combine: Asynchronous Programming with Swift, Catalyst by Tutorials, iOS Test-Driven Development by Tutorials, Machine Learning by Tutorials, Advanced iOS App Architecture, Concurrency by Tutorials, Design Patterns by Tutorials, Metal by Tutorials, and Mastering Git.		 $199.97
(Normally $580 for all the books)

You’ve been doing iOS development for a while and want to take it to the next level. These books will take you four to six months to go through, and by the end, you’ll be an iOS development force to be reckoned with.

Are you angling for a senior developer position doing iOS development? This is for you.
Advanced Android & Kotlin Black Friday Bundle:
Reactive Programming with Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines by Tutorials, Advanced Android App Architecture, Android Test-Driven Development by Tutorials, and Mastering Git.		 $99.97
(Normally $300 for all the books)

You’ve been doing Android development for a while and want to take it to the next level. These books will take you four to six months to go through, and by the end, you’ll be an Android development force to be reckoned with.

Are you angling for a senior developer position doing Android development? This is for you.

If you don’t want a bundle, the individual books are also available at sale prices. Don’t miss this opportunity — go check out the RayWenderlich.com store and get these bargains before they’re gone!

Categories
Uncategorized

The “Your first iOS and SwiftUI app” video course — based on my chapters from the “iOS Apprentice” book!

In the next couple of days, the 8th edition of iOS Apprentice — a great book for beginners who want to learn how to write iOS apps — will be available. I learned iOS programming from an earlier version, and fittingly enough, I wrote the first two sections of the upcoming edition.

In my sections, I show you how to write apps using SwiftUI, the new declarative Swift-based way of defining user interfaces for iOS and other Apple operating systems. This required me to not just revise the previous edition, but to rewrite my sections nearly from scratch. It was a lot of work, but it was enjoyable work, and I’m quite pleased with the results.

If you’d like a taste of what my section of the book is like, check out these sample videos from the RayWenderlich.com course called Your first iOS and SwiftUI app. It’s based on some of my chapters from iOS Apprentice, where you learn how to write your first app: a simple game called Bullseye. You can access the whole course with a subscription, which is a worthwhile investment.

And now, the sample videos…

Your First Programming Challenge: Making a Programming To-Do List

The course starts with a challenge: given a description of the game you’re about to develop, make a to-do list of tasks that you, as the programmer, will have to perform in order to have a completed app.

Getting Started with SwiftUI

Now that you’ve go a to-do list, it’s time to build your first Swift and SwiftUI app — an app that displays a button.

Objects, Data and Methods

Now that you’ve created your first app, you’ll need to learn a little programming theory and how it relates to the code behind the app.

Buttons and Actions

At this point, the app displays a button on the screen, but nothing happens when you press it. Let’s fix that.

Swift UI State

State is a key part of programming with SwiftUI. In this section, Ray introduces the concept of state and how it relates to how the SwiftUI draws the user interface.

Solving Code Problems

One of the biggest pitfalls when learning iOS development when something goes wrong. Here’s how you deal with these situations.

Portrait vs Landscape

In this section, you’ll learn about portrait and landscape modes, iDevice screen resolutions, and setting up the app so that it displays its content in landscape mode only.

Swift UI Views

This covers views, which are anything that’s drawn on the screen.

Swift UI Layout

You’ll learn the basic of laying out user interface elements on the app’s screens in this section.

Spacers and Padding

Cluttered interfaces aren’t as usable, so here come spacers and padding to the rescue!

Once again, you can watch the entire course (plus every other course and tutorial at RayWenderlich.com) with a subscription, and you can get this tutorial in book form soon when the book i co-wrote — iOS Apprentice, 8th edition — comes out in just a few days!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, November 25, 2019)

Hey, Tampa Bay techies, entrpreneurs, and nerds — here’s what’s happening in Tampa Bay this week!

It’s the week of Thanksgiving, so things are going to be more quiet than usual. Take the time to kick back, take stock, and find things to be thankful for, which should include being based in the best small tech talent market in North America. Next week, we’ll probably see the number of events ramp up as our local meetups start throwing their Holiday parties.

This weekly list is posted as a voluntary service to the Tampa tech community. With the notable exceptions of Tampa iOS Meetup and Coders, Creatives and Craft Beer — both of which I run — most of this information comes from Meetup.com, EventBrite, and other local event announcement sites. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the dates and times listed here; if you want to be absolutely sure that the event you’re interested in is actually taking place, please contact the organizers!

Monday, November 25

Tuesday, November 26

Wednesday, November 27

Because it’s the day before Thanksgiving, I strongly recommend that you double-check with the organizers that the events listed below are actually happening before you attend.

Thursday, November 28: Thanksgiving!

The events listed below are recurring events, and it’s very, very likely that their organizers forgot to account for Thanksgiving and remove them from the schedule. I’m including them only because they’re still listed in their schedules.

Friday, November 29: Black Friday

Because it’s the day after Thanksgiving, I strongly recommend that you double-check with the organizers that the events listed below are actually happening before you attend.

Saturday, November 30

Sunday, December 1

Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?

If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!