In the latest Dart Developer Show episode, Jonathan Böcker has a fascinating story to share about his work creating the Dart AWS Client packages and how he is using them in production to run diagnostics on his app.
Use the links below to jump to any topic that interests you:
01:22 -- Jonathan’s background and professional experience
02:45 -- AWS big picture overview
03:45 -- AWS Lambda
05:21 -- AWS Lambda developer workflow
08:36 -- Motivation to explore using Dart on AWS Lambda
10:17 -- Creation of the Dart AWS Client libraries
18:16 -- Use case in production
26:11 -- The Dart AWS client open source project on GitHub
30:05 -- Final thoughts
The Dart Developer Show podcast recently welcomed Chris Sells from the Google Flutter team to talk about some interesting topics including lessons learned from building UI technologies, the evolution of software engineering, new features in Flutter, Flutter Desktop, Flutter Web and working on open source projects.
Use the timestamps below to jump to any topic that interests you:
01:25 -- Chris’ background and work at Google
05:41 -- Challenges and trade-offs in building a UI toolkit
13:29 -- Flutter’s approach to multi-platform support - how it avoids common pitfalls
19:20 -- Navigator 1.0 vs Navigator 2.0
28:15 -- Flutter Desktop for Windows - getting to alpha and what’s left to do for a full 1.0 release
41:15 -- Flutter Web - unique challenges of targeting the web and how the team is approaching this.
47:10 -- Building Flutter as an open source project
51:25 -- Chris’ publications and approach to writing
56:11 -- Final thoughts and advice
I agree entirely with this article. From my own experience, I did a lot of abstract maths in undergrad and really hated it because I couldn't figure out what all these Groups, Topologies, Normed Vector Spaces, etc were all about. What was the use of learning all these things without some practical application? It was only later on when I started to learn more about the people behind these theories, and the challenges that motivated them, that it became more interesting. The founders of all this knowledge were trying to get one thing or the other done, and this is what motivated them to construct these mind bending abstractions.
I think it is a lot more effective to give students challenges rather than knowledge. When they get stuck (and they will get stuck eventually), then give them the knowledge they need to overcome their obstacles. Of course, you never know, without having some pre-determined way of solving something, the students might end up discovering a smarter ways of solving the same problems!
What do you guys think about the increase in the number of these document publishing sites. Will these morph into web based filing systems to replace the filing systems on our PCs?
What's their business model and which site will become dominant?
I think users will always pay as little as they possibly can.
Advertising models could be seen more as a competitive strategy of companies that have efficient infrastructure to target ads to software users, thus reducing the price of the software for the end user and squeezing out competition.
So, I think the lesson is to always be thinking of advertising models because if your competition is and you're not, you could find yourself priced out of the market.
I think with Internet based companies, it is kind of counterproductive to focus on monetization at an early stage. This is because many innovative web companies tend to change the economics of how people make money in an industry. The best example of this is Google, that is shaking up the software industry by practically giving software away but earning revenue through advertising.
Changing industries requires a lot of industry clout, which I think YC gives its budding companies, freeing them to concentrate on designing good products that create value. If the product is really good and creates real value, the industry will reshape itself somehow to reward the entrepreneurs.
I would tend to agree with this. On first site, virb doesn't seem like a site where the content is produced by ordinary people. If I had no experience with the web or design, I would be kind of shy to upload my content as it might look too scruffy for such a polished site.
On the other hand, the sheer scruffiness of a myspace and some of the content on there drastically lowers the perceived entry standards for one to participate. Therefore you have more people unashamed to put up their poorly designed sites.
Use the links below to jump to any topic that interests you:
01:22 -- Jonathan’s background and professional experience 02:45 -- AWS big picture overview 03:45 -- AWS Lambda 05:21 -- AWS Lambda developer workflow 08:36 -- Motivation to explore using Dart on AWS Lambda 10:17 -- Creation of the Dart AWS Client libraries 18:16 -- Use case in production 26:11 -- The Dart AWS client open source project on GitHub 30:05 -- Final thoughts