Tuesday, January 3, 2012

New Year Resolutions

It's that time of year again...


What is my quest: To update my software development skills.
What to study: Phone app development
What kind of apps: Eventually games, but let's start with something simple... 
Possible technologies: Native, Web, Cross platform?


Where to start? Well, I started by poking around the web for a few weeks looking at possible development frameworks and stacks. 


I have an iPod Touch and a Macbook so native Xcode was an obvious starting point. Although I still want to develop native apps with Objective-C, I'd also like to update my web development skills.


HTML5 web apps look pretty good. The cross platform issue is solved by using a web based app, but you run into issues with offline use. Client side HTML5 solves this, but how do you market it?


PhoneGap to the rescue. I can wrap client side HTML5 into a native app wrapper that can target iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc.


There are a lot of frameworks available. SpineJS is still in the running but I think it needs a bit more work on the mobile side. I really like coffeescript, but as a "classically" educated developer (code for "get off my lawn") I feel it's necessary to understand the foundation layers. So, I'm starting with javascript.


To learn javascript, I'm going to follow a great series written by Alan Young at DailyJS.com called "Let's Make a Framework". 


Here's what my preliminary framework looks like. It's subject to change of course.



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