"mobile development" entries

Software engineers must continuously learn and integrate

Four ways programmers can thrive in their careers.

Software engineers: themes to watch in software architecture, open source culture and code, data, mobile and the Internet of Things

As O’Reilly continues to build and assess our programming content ecosystem — now more than 30 years in the making — we have gone from covering a few key languages, operating systems, and concepts to a diversification of topics that would have made an editor’s head spin in the 1980s. Our goal, however, remains the same: to continue to provide practical content from experts who help you do your job. An important piece of that goal is to keep you informed as we interpret the trends on the horizon. What follows are a few of the core themes we are focusing on at the moment. Expect these to evolve and change with the speed of innovation.

You can also stay in the loop on the latest analysis and developments through our weekly Programming newsletter.

Actually be a software engineer

The term “full-stack” first emerged in a 2008 blog post (the original post is no longer available, but an archive is published here). The term perhaps reached its canonical definition in a post by Facebook engineer Carlos Bueno. He wrote:

“A ‘full-stack programmer’ is a generalist, someone who can create a non-trivial application by themselves. People who develop broad skills also tend to develop a good mental model of how different layers of a system behave.“

Whether you are striving to be a full-stack programmer, a T-shaped engineer, or you choose to rebuff those terms entirely as mere marketing, what now floats around as a “full-stack developer” definition is incomplete. Read more…

Signals from Velocity New York 2014

From the lure of work that matters to building your own device lab, here are key talks from Velocity New York 2014.

Practitioners and experts from the web operations and performance worlds came together in New York City this week for Velocity New York 2014. Below you’ll find a handful of keynotes and interviews from the event that we found particularly notable.


Mikey Dickerson: From Google to HealthCare.gov to the U.S. Digital Service

“These problems are fixable, these problems are important, but they require you to choose to work on them” — Mikey Dickerson looks back on what it took to fix HealthCare.gov and he reveals his reasons for joining the U.S. Digital Service.

Read more…

Prepare for change now, and you’ll be ready for it later

Max Firtman on the future of mobile and the importance of embracing change.

Companies and developers have plenty of mobile development challenges — OS platforms, the growing number of devices and screen sizes, and the myriad requirements of browsers, to name a few. Soon — or already — the Internet of Things is going to muddy the waters further. In a recent interview, Max Firtman, founder of ITMaster, stressed the importance of the growing ubiquitousness of IoT and the necessity that companies embrace the future:

”Maybe in 10 years, we’re going to see devices everywhere sending input information to apps that might be in the server, in the cloud — and those apps will carry some kind of intelligence, and will bring us back information on other devices that could be a smart watch, smart glass, a phone; we don’t know, yet, exactly what will be here. But there are a lot of challenges there for content owners or companies because you need to understand that you’re going to be everywhere.

Read more…

How Web Pages Can Extend (or Drain) Mobile Device Battery Life

Dr. Angela Nicoara on mobile browser energy consumption and ways developers can minimize energy use through design.

According to recent Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecasts (PDF), the number of mobile-connected devices will surpass the world’s population this year, and by 2015, there will be 788 million mobile-only Internet users. A recent paper, “Who Killed My Battery: Analyzing Mobile Browser Energy Consumption (PDF),” pulled together by the Deutsche Telekom Innovation Center in Silicon Valley and Stanford University researchers and published in the ACM 21st International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2012) proceedings (PDF), takes a look at the growing popularity of mobile web browsing and the effects on energy consumption.

I reached out to Dr. Angela Nicoara, senior research scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Innovation Center in Silicon Valley who worked on the project, to find out why mobile browser energy consumption is a growing concern and what developers need to know going forward. Our interview follows. Dr. Nicoara will present the researchers’ findings in the “Who Killed My Battery: Analyzing Mobile Browser Energy Consumption” session at the Fluent 2013 conference next week in San Francisco, CA.

Why is browser energy consumption becoming more of an issue with the growth of smartphones and mobile browsing?

Dr. Angela Nicoara

Dr. Angela Nicoara

Dr. Angela Nicoara: Despite the explosive growth of smartphones and growing popularity of mobile web browsing, their utility has been and will remain severely limited by the battery life. Smartphones’ energy constraints are here to stay, and as such, optimizing the energy consumption of the phone browser while surfing the Web is of critical importance today and will remain so in the foreseeable future.

Read more…

jQuery took on a common problem and then grew through support

John Resig on jQuery's adoption, mobile frustrations, and the rise of JavaScript.

Rather than accept the deep flaws of cross-browser functionality, John Resig did something about them. In this video interview from Velocity 2011, Resig discusses his initial goals for jQuery, the complexity of mobile, and why JavaScript has become a critical development tool.

Top Stories: April 30-May 4, 2012

An open standards battle in the U.K., mobile web development keeps growing, the upside of functional languages.

This week on O'Reilly: We learned how the U.K. government is facing pressure from all sides as it evaluates open standards, Maximiliano Firtman evaluated two years' worth of mobile web developments, and the utility of functional languages was put in the spotlight.

Mobile web development isn't slowing down

Maximiliano Firtman on mobile web development's recent leaps.

Over the last two years, mobile web development has continued its rapid evolution. In this interview, Fluent speaker and "Programming the Mobile Web" author Maximiliano Firtman discusses the short-term changes that caught his attention.

Mobile web development isn’t slowing down

Maximiliano Firtman on mobile web development's recent leaps.

Over the last two years, mobile web development has continued its rapid evolution. In this interview, Fluent speaker and "Programming the Mobile Web" author Maximiliano Firtman discusses the short-term changes that caught his attention.

Cross-platform mobile development is a breeze with C#

Greg Shackles on why C# makes sense for mobile development.

Find out why using C# for cross-platform mobile development will take you less time and less code while bringing your apps to a wider audience.

PhoneGap basics: What it is and what it can do for mobile developers

Joe Bowser on using PhoneGap to develop across mobile platforms.

Joe Bowser, the developer of the Android version of PhoneGap, on the pros and cons of developing with the PhoneGap cross-platform application framework.