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silkodysseyon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (September 2019)

SEEKING WORK - Remote Mobile Developer based in the Caribbean (reasonable rate :)) Skills: Native iOS / Android, React Native. I've worked on projects using RxJava, Firebase, MVP architecture.

I also have experience with client side development React / VueJS / Redux and server side development with Node.

email: kelvin.pompey@gmail.com

silkodysseyon RubyMotion Moving Forward Under New Leadership

You write Android apps the same way you'd write them in Java and the Android SDK but with the Ruby language. The quickstart gives you an idea of how to translate some of the Java to Ruby but you'll still need to learn how to build Android apps with Java.

silkodysseyon Lessons learned from hitting the front page of Hacker News

In an absolute sense, maybe but 10x more would be moving in the right direction! :)

silkodysseyon Tempted to Abandon React Native for Native Android

I posted a follow-up to this story talking about further explorations based on the feedback I got from your comments.

https://kelvinpompey.me/tempted-to-abandon-react-native-for-...

silkodysseyon Tempted to Abandon React Native for Native Android

The first module I tried was react-native-image-picker and yes it returns an object with base64 encoded data. What I do with this data is first, resize the image then display the resized image in an ImageView then upload the resized image to Firebase Storage.

silkodysseyon Tempted to Abandon React Native for Native Android

I did just that. I created a native Android project that selected an image from the image picker and displayed it in an image view. I tested it with a few images and it worked. Even the image that crashed the React Native app.

"Given that you believe this is a memory-related problem, perhaps it's because the image is too large to fit into the available memory, and having React Native made it worse. "

This is precisely what I think it is.

silkodysseyon Tempted to Abandon React Native for Native Android

That's an interesting idea. The code to select and resize the images are native third-party plugins so in this case I am not sure anything more could be done.

I thought maybe the problem was that the app had to switch to another app to select the image. I reimplemented the code using a pure JavaScript plugin based on React Native's CameraRoll API to avoid switching apps and it still crashed when the image was selected for processing.

silkodysseyon Tempted to Abandon React Native for Native Android

I've dabbled with NativeScript a bit. It does seem a bit closer to the underlying platform but from my experience of it, it felt incomplete.

I first tried the Angular version before the final version of Angular was released and I recall occasions where the documentation for NativeScript was behind the actual API. I had to look at the actual code samples to figure out the correct APIs.

The next time I looked at it, I tried the regular JavaScript version and I recall having trouble deciphering the API for the SideBar plugin.

This left me feeling a bit insecure about the product. It looks to have a lot of potential though but it could use a bit more polish and better documentation.

silkodysseyon Tempted to Abandon React Native for Native Android

That's a fair point about the opportunity to build some performance-tuning muscle but I imagine to do that would require solid knowledge of both React and Android. Where do I start? I am more inclined to go towards the native Android side first.

Aa a follow up, I just did a test with a native Android app doing the same thing: getting an image through an Intent. With the native Android app, the same image that was crashing the React Native app doesn't cause any problems.

silkodysseyon Tranquil is a programming language built on top of LLVM & the Obj-C Runtime

There is also eero which has similar goals. http://eerolanguage.org/

silkodysseyon Metro breakdown: Windows 8 UI is little gain for lots of pain

This article is spot on. I love the metro UI but in its current form it's not quite ready for the desktop. Some things that were easy to accomplish before are now made more difficult. The removal of the start button is one. Having to click the corner of the screen to access the Start Screen is frustrating. The target to click is essentially smaller which requires more precision and effort to hit.

Closing apps is also more difficult. On the desktop you just click the big red button and the window disappears but in metro you're required to click the top of the screen and drag the app to the bottom of the screen. It's a lot more work and it's frustrating.

The interesting thing about all these frustrations on the PC is that on a tablet they'd be great! Metro is a great tablet UI. It's optimized for touch. This is clear so why force it onto the desktop? This clearly demonstrates the difference between Microsoft and Apple's philosophy on user experience. Microsoft is cannibalizing the desktop user experience to realize a utopian vision of one OS to run on all devices. If Windows 8 on tablets is a massive success then maybe to MIcrosoft that would have made it all worthwhile. People could always go back to windows 7 on the desktop if they prefer to. Maybe this is Microsoft realizing that we are indeed in a Post-PC era and it needs to succeed in this space at all costs!

silkodysseyon Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

I would much prefer to see Google fail trying to stay relevant than fail (like RIM) for not being able to adapt.

silkodysseyon Announcing Cappuccino 0.9.5

https://github.com/cappuccino/cappuccino

silkodysseyon With HP tablet dead, who can challenge Apple?

Amazon!I think amazon knows what it takes to challenge the iPad. Their success with the Kindle shows that it can produce a quality hardware product. Also, the fact that they've said very little about their plans suggests that, unlike HP they aren't going to release it until it's ready. And when it's ready, just like with the Kindle, they'll promote it on the front page of their retail site and provided that it's a good product and it gets good reviews it will take off.

silkodysseyon Are Free Phones in Our Future? A VC’s Take on Why Google is Buying Motorola

I don't see Google giving away phones for free. This would be seen as anti-competitive and unfair by their partners and they would drop android and seek alternatives like windows phone. Google wants a world where Android runs on different handsets by different manufacturers. This is part of why the Android ecosystem is so resilient. Failure of one manufacturer is not going to destroy the Android operating system as there would be other companies to pick up the slack. Google cannot afford to fight the mobile wars on its with strong enemies in Apple and Microsoft who would love to see Android die.

silkodysseyon The Art of Assembly Language Programming

Are you betov, the author of Rosasm?

silkodysseyon Here’s how you can get an invite to Google+ right now

Just sent you an invite!

silkodysseyon Here’s how you can get an invite to Google+ right now

It did thanks!

silkodysseyon Here’s how you can get an invite to Google+ right now

Anyone kind enough to send me an invite? My address is in my profile.

silkodysseyon DjangoCon EU 2011 Videos

List of titles with links:

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1530-andrew-god... Core Developers Panel

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1655-lightning-... Lightning talks

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1615-jonas-obri... The Django ORM and Multilingual Database contents

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1635-ed-crewe-5... Integrating the Enterprise Using Django

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1415-klaas-van-... Reusable Apps using "Eight Spaces"

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/17-20-remco-wendt-53197... Closing

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1615-russel-k... Whither Django?

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1530-andrew-g... Scalability Panel

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1700-russel-k... Sprint Introduction

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1030-nate-aun... An iPhone-Python Love Affair: Building APIs for mobile

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1330-andrew-g... Deploying At An Unusual Scale

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-0930-armin-ro... The Impact of Django

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1415-will-har... Taming runtime dynamic models in Django

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1205-zachary-... Django on Rais: Getting Resourceful

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/wednesday-1145-alex-gay... The Best and worst of Django's core

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-0930-martijn-fa... Who cares about Zope?

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1030-jesper-noe... Bitbucket - Lessons learned

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1330-markus-zap... Celery: An asynchronous task queue (not only) for Django

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1145-szilveszte... Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/tuesday-1205-matt-westc... Unjoinify: A module to tame the SQL beast

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1445-dennis-buns... 3 CMSes in 45 minutes

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1130-andy-mckay-... Large Django Sites at Mozilla

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1600-idan-gazit-... Responsive Web design with Django, Compass and the Less framework

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1645-lightning-t... Lightning talks

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1215-jannis-leid... How I learnt to stop worrying and love python packaging

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1400-alex-gaynor... How I learnt to stop worrying and love python packaging

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/monday-1000-eric-floren... From static to realtime: One app's journey into the modern age

http://blip.tv/djangocon-europe-2011/episode-5300929 Opening

silkodysseyon Chameleon - UIKit for Mac development

I think the same argument can be made with regard to iPhone apps running on iPad. iPhone apps on the iPad are not very pleasant but if you absolutely must have that iPhone app on your iPad then you can put up with a suboptimal experience just to have the functionality.

I think the same thing occurs on the desktop. Many times I use iPad applications and wish they were available on the desktop. iPad applications especially I think can work very well on the desktop due to the large display.

But don't take my work for it. Have a look at the streamtome app on the mac app store. The interface mimics that of the iPad. I am not sure if it uses chameleon but there's a good chance I would guess.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/streamtome/id405892506?mt=12

silkodysseyon Ode to the App Review team

The process may suck for the developers but I agree with the article that it creates benefits for the end users. It's a core part of Apple's philosophy to cater to their customers at all cost. I am certain that apple pushes its own staff very hard to produce the quality of work they do, and when you sign up to become an Mac or iOS developer you become essentially an apple employee or contractor and as such you have to follow the company culture and philosophy just like the internal staff. It has been working for them, the company is thriving so why change course?

I think there may be merits in the arguments made for third party app repositories for iOS but I believe that there is some value, real or imagined in knowing that an application has the stamp of approval of the company that created the platform.

silkodysseyon Social networking for energy conservation [video]

This is an innovative project which aims to help people reduce their energy consumption by giving them tools to monitor and compare their usage with that of their friends.

It's currently in contention for the GE ecomagination prize which seeks to find the projects with the most potential to make the world more energy efficient.

If you this like this project your vote will be appreciated. In order to do you you'll be required to signup to the GE ecomagination site at http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=i...

silkodysseyon There Are No Famous Programmers

Well the point I was trying to make was that people become famous when they can be linked to something that a lot of people care about. We see this in the entertainment industry where it's easy to associate a blockbuster film with the stars or directors of the film.

This is not typically the case in the software industry where the Blockbuster software so to speak are produced by Companies and not lone programmers. That is to say the company is the face of the software.

I used Microsoft Word (maybe I should have used Office) because it's an example of a software application where the company that makes it is well known and I thought if it were possible for one person to create an application with as large an impact as Microsoft Office has had in the world then surely that person would be remembered.

One notable exception to the rule I think is Linus Torvalds. He still remains the face of linux although what linux is today is due to contributions from a large number of people.

silkodysseyon There Are No Famous Programmers

If Microsoft Word were written by a single programmer that programmer would have been famous!

silkodysseyon "Matters Computational" - Free Ebook on Algorithms

There's a single PDF on the page but there's a request to not link directly to it.

silkodysseyon Stanford Machine Learning Course

Additional content (transcripts/handouts/assignments) are available at the Standford website.

http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3...

silkodysseyon Wage Slavery - Applicable to [Nearly] Everybody?

I think you make a useful point. At a high level of abstraction "real slavery" and "wage slavery" seem very similar but for the people who were / are really affected it's a world of difference. It puts things in perspective.

silkodysseyon How to Make Money Online

How could you expect anyone to pay for your product if you don’t do it yourself.

I find this particularly insightful. I think we tend to project our own perspectives onto other people and if someone personally doesn't pay for software it's difficult to believe that anyone would.

This is my principal challenge as I attempt to transition into an entrepreneur. I hate spending money and it's probably affecting the quality of the work I produce. I often opt to produce my own designs when I would probably be better off outsourcing that on something like 99 designs.

Old habits die hard but I am working on getting over it and articles like this one help a great deal.

silkodysseyon Ask HN: (meta) Etiquette of submitting own stuff

Agreed. I think the ability to start posts on HN (the Ask HN variety) suggests that submitting your own content is welcome. If the content is relevant then it gets voted up.