WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

mattquiros's comments

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: How Much To Charge for iOS development

What would be a professional developer's rate then? Should one charge higher if the project involves building the back-end yourself?

Also, exactly what does it take to qualify as a "professional" developer, by which I don't think you merely mean being a mobile developer full-time, but actually having some set of qualifications?

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: Android is for startups

> This isn't some giant inconvenience that warrants completely switching a platform.

WRONG. Contacting all 30 of your friends and WAITING for them to give you their device UUIDs and giving them long instructions on how to find it from iTunes if they don't know how? How is that easier than sending an APK to your friends which they can simply download and install? And you seem to just have glossed over how it's a waste of money to sign up for an iOS developer license to build an app that, you find out, nobody wants to use.

> why would you start creating OS specific functionality you know will never work on the other platform. It's completely illogical.

Uhhhhhh, what? What do you mean OS-specific functionality? GPS? File reading and writing? Motion sensors? Buttons and text fields? Are you kidding me? Both Android and iOS have those. Do you even own a smartphone?

If you mean iCloud, why is that a problem? Even if you're developing for iOS, you can use Google Drive. If my startup had something to do with cloud syncing, catering to platform-exclusive cloud services isn't illogical.

> iOS is likely to remain the primary platform for prototyping. Why ? Because it is just so much nicer.

I'm pretty sure a "prototype" doesn't have to be "nice."

> The iOS Simulator "just works" and exactly mirrors your target devices.

Again, WRONG. You're not supposed to rely on the simulator precisely because it DOESN'T exactly mirror your target devices. It doesn't have motion sensors, uses your computer's internet connection as its own, uses your computer's processing power as its own, doesn't give you the same retina iPhone experience, etc.

Gee, have you even tried developing mobile apps?

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: Show HN: My 1st mobile app- A parasitic,anonymous,remixable img app for android

Hi, I was developing for Android first and am now doing iOS. I do think that Android is a bigger challenge than iOS, primarily because you have to cater to many different screen sizes. Sure, you have the iPhone 5 which is taller than the other iPhones, but it's more about "clipping" the content for the smaller ones rather than "scaling" the UI up or down for a screen size and Android OS version. It's also heaven how you can have arrays and dictionaries (maps in Java) that contain different data types in Objective-C, even blocks of executable code!

I used to do just Java and knew no C or C++. Below are the references that best helped me to understand the programming philosophy of Objective-C (it's easy to learn the syntax, but why code is being written a certain way is different).

Programming in Objective-C (5th Edition) by Stephen Kochan http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/032188728X

CS193P: Developing Apps for iPhone and iPad (Stanford, via iTunes U) https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/coding-together-developin...

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: If you were starting your career today, which language would you learn?

I've only been working for two years so I guess my career has pretty much just started, and I like the path I've (accidentally) taken to learning languages.

I met my first real programming language in college, Java, and I still recommend it to any beginner. It's great for grasping OOP concepts, algorithms, data structures, design patterns, and other problem-solving approaches that you can carry on to implement in other languages. I did some work in enterprise systems and Android during my first year.

Then I had to study Objective-C to make iOS apps, but I also picked up some things about C and I'm actually reading the K&R book now to know more. I think that C is a great language to learn after Java because it gives you an insight of what the Java syntax hides from you, but does anyway in the compiler level.

The thing now is that I don't know what I'm going to do next once I'm done with C. For me, I code because I want to build a product I can someday build a company with, so I don't really have a drive to learn the open web stack in depth (I already have mobile for front-end). I guess I'm just gonna go back to mastering the algorithms and some maths. Or does anyone have advice for me what to do next?

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: Video on Instagram

I think people are missing the point here if we're judging Instagram on the grounds of innovation alone. What's exciting about this is that Vine seems to be the only startup that got the formula of "Instagram for video" right, and now we're seeing them being surprise-attacked by a relatively unexpected competitor that has a far bigger user base and launches on Android and iOS at the same time. I don't even think there are that many people interested in crafting short video clips using these apps so I'm personally thrilled how Vine's going to thrive now that the ball's in their court. There's a lot to be learned from this developing story if you're an entrepreneur.

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: Confessions of a Ruby Developer Whose Heart was Stolen by Scala

Hm, I don't know what you've seen but I'm pretty sure Java is about breaking up large systems into many smaller pieces that work together, instead of one big clusterfuck. Must be some really badly designed system, more of a programmer's fault than the language itself

mattquiros | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN:Why do you all use macbooks

Battery life, it's light, the trackpad is so good you won't need a mouse (though I do miss it sometimes). I also don't worry about viruses--although Macs can get infected if you're really careless about the sites you visit and things you download, but I am. Always been a Windows user, even Ubuntu for a brief period, switched just August last year and I'm never coming back. Ubuntu is the only other OS I'd like to use, but my Mac is pretty good already.

mattquiros | 13 years ago | on: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

I don't work for Yahoo either, but I still wouldn't consider working there even with Marissa Mayer on board. It just has a better CEO but it's still a doomed company. I can't think of a single Yahoo! product that I sincerely believe in and would be excited to work on.

mattquiros | 13 years ago | on: Ask HN: Would you hire me?

Can I just say that this is really great feedback? I'm not in a hiring position but I just came from jobhunting. I realized I wouldn't just apply to any startup just to work at a startup--it really matters when you believe in the product. That way, you can treat it as your own and come up with ideas how to make it better, and think of your job less as a drag.

mattquiros | 13 years ago | on: Ask HN: Would you use AWS for a primary infrastructure if you're a bank?

I've actually thought of this too but I have a (weird?) issue with maintenance--our country's near the equator, and on really bad summers (which is almost half a year long), it's almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit everyday. I'm not so sure it's a great idea to have our own data center here. Also I'm asking this because I know Facebook got their own near the North Pole to keep maintenance costs low.
page 3
newer more