Since the I-Phone’s release, the “general public” has been switched on to mobile computing in a new way. Previously expensive, high end, “smart phones”/mobile-devices were marketed to business users and geeks. Now the landscape has changed: devices are springing up from many manufacturers and Apple’s App Store model is popular across the board.
It seems logical that, as these devices become more widely used, the way users interact with web services will incorporate the mobile platform as a core method of interaction.
Next time I’m building a new service that needs to be accessible on multiple platforms I think it would make sense to build an API before a website. Until recently I’ve planned projects around browser based distribution, now the browser may become less dominant.
Having useful services open to many developers over an API will aid proliferation of the tool. Developers would be free to provide the applications for the various platforms (as Twitter have done, I suppose that’s why the next step on from “hello world” is becoming the Twitter client on many SDK tutorials). I know this is nothing new, but as mobile becomes more embedded into daily life: the way developers build services on the web will need to shift to accommodate it.
This isn’t really a “proper post” more of a stream of consciousness; I’m about to make the shift from Web Developer to Mobile Developer and am very excited about the new possibilities.
Last Friday I went along to the Guardian Tech Weekly Tour’s visit to Bristol (in case you didn’t know I mostly grew up and now live in Bristol).
I thought it’d be a good chance to meet up with a few faces from the local start-ups and web-development scene. So, I was pleasantly supprised to be able to have a chat with Jemima Kiss and get a bit of advice/insight into the projects I’m working on, I assumed that she’d be mobbed and too busy. She gave some really constructive and positive feedback on the web apps I’m building; it was a pleasant end to the week.
While there I was also interviewed for the podcast about what makes Bristol a good location for web development and starting a business (not that I know a great deal about the latter). I was slightly drunk on one and a half pints (it happens that way sometimes) so didn’t expect to make it into the show… But, I did – so if you want to hear my weird high-pitched voice listen to Tech Weekly: On the road in Bristol (I pop up at 22:38).
PS:If you’re bored of posts about my day-to-day existence: fear not, there’s some solid programming fun coming up later this week…
As this blog is something of a stream of consciousness I thought it might be useful to lay out the themes that I’ll be touching on over the next few posts.
First and foremost, I’m a working developer producing PHP sites for S-cool and that is how I earn my living. I’m not: claiming to be a “rock star” programmer, aiming to blow my own trumpet or otherwise puff up my own ego. The more modest intention is to document the problems and solutions that I find interesting/exciting and hopefully engage in, and contribute to, the various developer communities a little more.
Core areas of interest are:
writing efficient, beautiful, scalable code
comparing/discussing the various languages, frameworks, tools and ideologies
learning new skills
The language I’ve most recently adopted is Erlang and I expect the majority of my first posts will cover my progress learning how to use it and evaluating why functional programming is so hot right now. If you are interested in joining in, learning along or setting me straight when I misunderstand: my current guides are The Getting Started With Erlang and Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World.