Lori M Olson OPED ā Our Unvarnished Opinion
I want to talk to you about a business book Iāve been listening to on Audible this month The ONE THING, by Gary Keller. I wonāt bother with an affiliate link, if you are interested, Iām sure you can find it. While this book, and others I have recently read, is primarily written for business owners, Iāve found a lot of interesting parallels with application development. Especially mobile apps. How many of you have been tasked with building large, full featured apps, only to have the development drag on, bugs stack up, and the launch fizzle? I think people forget that most really successful apps have one thing in common. They started small. Really small. With a single useful, valuable feature. Their ONE THING. When we concentrate on the one thing, we can do a very good job on it, we can launch quickly, and without a lot of bugs, because thereās not a lot of extra cruft getting in the way. Think about that when you get started on your next project. ā WNDXLori
FITS ā Featured in the School
This week we are celebrating š. It took us a year and a half, but we finally did it. We broke through that stubborn barrier - 500 subscribers. Thatās right. DragonRuby Dispatch now has over 500 subscribers that we reach every other week with all the latest DragonRuby and mobile application news. I hope youāve enjoyed the ride so far and I hope you stick with us for the next year and a half because things are going to be changing very fast.
As a thank you, Iām going to be throwing all the new subscribers over the last 2 weeks into a hat, and drawing an email. The lucky chosen subscriber will be receiving a free course - RubyMotion Jumpstart!
And for all you other people whoāve been with us all along, stay tuned, because Iāll have another draw for all of you coming up in our third April newsletter, on the 29th!
GOTW ā Gem of the Week
If youāre getting a little fed up with news services that seem to be slanted one way or another why not consider setting up your own? āWhat, my own news app?ā Yep, thatās exactly what we mean and here are the two essential ingredients you need:
First, the good folks at NewsAPI.org have a beautiful, simple-to-use API which aggregates over ā30,000 news sources and blogsā. Itās free to use for developers.
Then, Latif Atci has provided source for a great little app which shows how to consume all that news and present it beautifully.
Yeah, we know, as usual not really a gem exactly. But if this doesnāt get your creative juices flowing thenā¦well, it really should and lets just leave it at that.
COMM ā Community
Weāve said it before but it bears repeating: weāre eternally in debt to our Community for keeping a weather eye out for interesting and helpful updates:
To wit, Esther Hare who tipped us off to āSign in with Appleā. Geez, we didnāt even know that was a thing. Guess The Big A was fed-up with having Google and Facebook grabbing all that stickiness. Just what we needed, a third option for logging in. Oh well, at least Apple pretends to care about our privacy.
Along the same lines, Apple is also rolling out Universal Purchase for Mac Apps. This further erodes the barriers between macOS, iOS and even watchOS/tvOS with respect to app and in-app purchases. Buy once, enjoy everywhere is Appleās theory. We think thatās a good idea?
AHTW ā App Highlight This Week
Uh oh. Yet another trend we totally missed. Yep, miniature gaming is a thing. We are so not cool. But setting aside that failing on our partā¦
Juhani LehtimƤki and his colleagues have come up with an app which sets some sort of new high bar for being tightly focused on just one thing. Whereas BattleScribe is a popular choice for tabletop wargamers, Juhani et al felt it fell short in one particular area: using the BattleScribe-created lists during the game itself. So they created their own to handle just this one thing. The result is Companion for Kill Team. While we may not understand the intricacies of the app like wargamers will, we absolutely respect the notion of having an app doing one thing really, really well. Cool.
And before you get on your high horse about āhow big can the market be for that?ā check it out on Google Play. The Early Access edition is already reporting over 1000 installs. So there.
DRGTK ā DragonRuby Game Toolkit
Even if youāve never heard of John Horton Conway there is still a very good chance that if youāre reading DragonRuby Dispatch youāve encountered his ideas at some point in the past. He invented the Game of Life, the perennial final assignment favourite of CompSci 101 profs everywhere. From a tweet by Dr. V. Vinay, we recently learned that 82 year old Conway recently passed away from COVID-19. We extend our condolences to his family and friends and he will be truly missed.
Weāre happy to quote Dr. Vinay when he says ā[f]or a word to be used sparingly, Conway was a genius.ā Weāre also thankful to have been prompted to read about Conwayās life and we highly recommend you do the same. It was an amazing one.
DRSH ā Dragon Riders Slack Highlights
From the always fertile channels of the Dragon Riders Slack team comes word that Brett Walker is dumping Fabric and is not going to Firebase.
For those who missed the beginning of this story Fabric bought Crashlytics which is what Brett was really using in the first place. Then Google bought Fabric and insisted on rebranding it under Swiss Army Knife wannabe Firebase. We are at a loss to understand why big companies always think thatās a good idea.
In any event, Brett is looking for alternatives and kicked off a decent thread along these lines.
ANDROID ā Nothinā butā¦
We always like a tight āfive things you must doā¦ā or ānine things you should never doā¦ā type article and we have a good one for you: The Seven (Actually 10) Cardinal Sins of Android Development from Gabor Varadi. While admittedly Java centric, this article still brings up some important anti-patterns that you should NOT be using in your RubyMotion code either.
TWIL ā This Week I Learned
Harkening back to #GOTW for just one more minute, we found ourselves looking for a quick-n-easy way to format the JSON code which NewsAPI.org barfs out. That is, if you simply use a browser to enter calls to the API as we did. We didnāt have to look too far to find a decent JSON Formatter & Validator. Cut-n-paste the barfed up blob into the window, click the Process button andāvoila!ābeautifully formatted JSON code for your viewing pleasure.
NOTE: For entertainment and educational purposes only. You would never use a utility like this for anything proprietary or sensitive as weāre pretty sure that a copy of whatever you pasted into the window will be retained āsomewhere out thereā.
HAHA ā And They All Laughed
Oh that we should all be as creative as Arnab Ray when he found a way of solving a practical, pervasive problem and keeping his suddenly housebound daughter busy. This is cute. And brilliant.
Thatās a Wrap!
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