Do you have the capability to enable automated testing of the system built with the app builder? In my experience continued success with an app builder quickly becomes dependent on some testing capability to avoid breaking things over time. This is similar to unit/integration/system tests a "regular" developer would do, but trickier since it means making that available to users at a lower technical skill level. I'm interested to hear what solution you have for this, or even just thoughts on how you might address it in the future.
The recent Rails 7 updates are pretty fun, although you could argue that's all boring, which is kind of the point. If it's a matter of getting something accomplished quickly, with the outcome being the fun part, I like Rails for it. For just satisfying cool stuff I like a good pile of BASH and awk. I find it rewarding to pipe a bunch of stuff together and get things done that might feel like it has no business being done like that. The fun of it in this case comes from quickly automating things. To the OPs point of a job change, this feels outside of the initial considerations, but hey it's fun stuff and maybe you'd like it! At a minimum there's a ton of value in software developers understanding the environment their code runs on and there's often space for "devops" activities to do a healthy mix of work on software dev and operations kind of stuff.
Medic | App Developer Manager, Senior Researcher | Full-time | Global/Remote | https://medic.org/
We're a non-profit organization working to provide tooling for community health projects.
We're hiring for a couple roles right now:
- App Developer Manager: Manage a team of software developers (who are mostly in Africa and Nepal) building applications for community health workers in areas we serve. https://medic.pinpointhq.com/en/jobs/6322
- Senior Researcher, Data Science: Oversee an ambitious R&D roadmap focused on breakthrough opportunities in data science and precision public health. https://medic.pinpointhq.com/en/jobs/11876
We're a non-profit organization working to provide tooling for community health projects. Our team focuses on development of the Community Health Toolkit, which is a suite of open source components, but primarily an offline-first web application.
Here’s a quick list of some of the interesting aspects of our work:
- An offline-first mobile-first webapp. A lot of healthcare workers we serve may go multiple weeks without a network connection.
- Our software needs to be usable on underpowered hardware, which is common for those using it. Client-side performance improvements can make a big impact.
- We provide a platform that locally-customizable apps are built with. Backwards compatibility is critical as is careful thought for new capabilities.
As for the technical parts, almost all development is done in JavaScript and TypeScript. We’re using Angular 10 on the client and node on the server with Pouch/CouchDB for data storage and syncing.
We're a non-profit organization working to provide tooling for community health projects. Our team focuses on development of the Community Health Toolkit, which is a suite of open source components, but primarily an offline-first web application.
Here’s a quick list of some of the interesting aspects of our work:
- An offline-first mobile-first webapp. A lot of healthcare workers we serve may go multiple weeks without a network connection.
- Our software needs to be usable on underpowered hardware, which is common for those using it. Client-side performance improvements can make a big impact.
- We provide a platform that locally-customizable apps are built with. Backwards compatibility is critical as is careful thought for new capabilities.
As for the technical parts, almost all development is done in JavaScript and TypeScript. We’re using Angular 10 on the client and node on the server with Pouch/CouchDB for data storage and syncing.
I agree. I have switched and used to feel like the switch was failing when I had to use Google for some things, but realized that's just fine. I also occasionally use Wolfram Alpha for things too. Both there if needed, but otherwise getting great results from a company that respects me.
After trying a few different options I have ended up on the (seemingly very uncool) Pimsleur program (available for cash lump sum or monthly. I am paying monthly). For me, one of the biggest challenges in French is how a lot of words get blended together and are spoken very fast. It's easy to hear what seem like new words, but they're actually things I know, but spoken as native speakers do. This listening concept is extremely important for me with French in particular. To contrast, I speak Swahili too and learned it differently, where I wouldn't say there's as much of a demand for emphasis on listening to native speakers.
Some other alternatives I tried first include:
Chatterbug: Nice combination of tools/methods, but expensive and I'd need to pay a much higher price to get the kind of listening I need. A side note on these guys that's relevant for this site: they do a lot of ruby/rails stuff and have a nice graphql gem called cacheql.
French Uncovered: Interesting idea and fun method of learning, but the "book" material wasn't as long as I'd have liked and I would have liked to do a lot more listening. The self-study written materials are decent, but felt slow and like a forced way of trying to cram information into my head, where I personally do better getting that stuff naturally.
Language Transfer: Great free option, but doesn't have native French speakers and the French course doesn't good too far.
I've also done the apps like Duolingo, but the listening and speaking isn't what they do best. I basically get great at Duolingo, but not at being able to use the language.
I remember a ROM distribution similar to this, where the maintainer/company also sold used phones with it preinstalled. I thought it was LineageOS, but looking at the LineageOS site I'm definitely remembering that wrong. Does anyone know the name for what I'm describing?
Looks like Google has their calendars messed up and meant to post this on April 1.
"Privacy is paramount to us" and then blaming abuses of my privacy on me? Funny stuff Google; you've really outdone yourselves with your April Fools post this year!
Get people to stay logged in to Google. Then when you do your regular google.com searches, Google knows exactly who you are rather than trying to figure it out for an "anonymous" searcher. I'd guess that alone is worth the cost of operating Gmail for free for everyone.
It's been fun to watch the pieces come together around the Librem 5 (although this is for more than just that). I wish Purism had done a documentary similar to the "Double Fine Adventure" kickstarter. I'd have paid more for that.
Even practical, since in browsers you can type "ddg" and press ctrl-enter and have it do the .com for you. I've found it's easier to just make ddg my default search engine though ;)
The thing that keeps me away from all of these kinds of things is the requirement to hand over my user/pass for financial accounts.
Questions for those that know the space:
1. Is that a big struggle for fintech companies or do most people just shrug it off?
2. Are companies working on (and making progress) standards for system communication without user/pass?