Apr
01

Mobile Madness – The Championship

This is it, you guys. THE CHAMPIONSHIP. Who will be the ultimate winner of Mobile Madness 2016?!?

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Swift vs Jake Wharton

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Swift

Swift has had a crazy, semantically satisfying ride to the finals in this tournament. It was picked in Round 1 over the world’s most used programming language, Java (*ahem* thanks fanboys *ahem*). In Round 2 it beat out it’s arch nemesis, the big, bad Objective-C. And then in a crazy match up that left even Apple fanboys wondering who would win, it stomped iOS. Finally, Swift beat out the juggernaut that is AWS to earn a spot in the finals!

We’ve covered Swift’s benefits and shortcomings fairly thoroughly in previous posts. To recap for you fair-weather fans:

“Swift is quite new on the scene, which only hit 1.0 in September, 2014. It has been acclaimed for it’s use of functional programming and value types which can help simplify problems in the minds of developers. With much to prove for general use outside of iOS and Mac apps, it’s support from the open source community as well as big players like IBM is driving adoption for the language at a rapid pace.”



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Jake Wharton

Aaaand on the other side we have the legendary Jake Wharton. In Round 1 Jake scored a win over UX giant Roman Nurik. Then he won the battle of the Jakes to advance over iOS indie Jake Marsh. He faced off with Swift contributer Erica Sadun and came out victorious to advance to the final 4. And somehow he beat out Steve Ballmer (!!!) to advance to the finals.

We’ve written a lot about Jake in our pervious posts, but for those not paying attention here’s a recap:

“Jake thrust himself into the spotlight with his incredibly famous open source Android libraries such as ActionBarSherlock and NineOldAndroids, as well as his contributions to Square’s massive catalogue of open source libraries such as Butterknife and Retrofit. He continues to deliver enlightening talks and presentations about Android and its continued evolution as a platform. ”


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Who will be the winner?!?

In a lot of ways, this matchup comes down to iOS fanboys vs Android fanboys. After all, those of us who grew up in the early days of Android development would have had a tough time without Jake’s timely and useful libraries. On the other hand, Swift has breathed some new life into iOS development and actually got us excited about a programming languages. So who will you pick to be the one to rule them all?

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Vote in our final Twitter poll here!

Mar
30

Mobile Madness – Final Four

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: Swift, AWS, Jake Wharton, and Steve Ballmer. Here is your updated Bracket.

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What is the essence of mobile development? Will it be a person? A service? A language? How did we get here and what happened to all those past contenders?

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Amazon Web Services vs Swift

Amazon Web Services has proven it’s worth in Mobile Madness as the powerhouse of cloud computing. The depth and breadth of it’s services speaks to the totality of it’s domination. AWS prides itself on it’s high scalability potential, which they’ve made clear by naming everything elastic. Swift, however, is no force to be trifled with. With 2.2 hot off the press, the language is still rapidly improving and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s also been proven with science that Swift developers are the beardiest. Show your support in today’s Twitter poll!


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Steve Ballmer vs Jake Wharton

Which tech-celebrity will come out on top? Will it be Steve Ballmer, with his unending passion for Microsoft and smooth dance moves? Or Jake Wharton, who continues to amaze with his Java mastery and penchant for making awesome libraries that you’re probably already using. Who will make it to the final round? Cast your vote in today’s Twitter poll! Answer the twitter poll here


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*** We somewhat cheat and pre-write these posts an hour or two before the closing of the polls each day but today we faced a huge upset. As of 11am Felix Krause was winning and so we wrote an awesome post where we discovered that Felix is a soccer-robot world-champion builder. UNFORTUNATELY, Steve Ballmer, with his wily ways pulled ahead at the last minute. (Amazing. Could it have been super delegates?) And so we had to edit our post, but felt that if we had shared with the world this fun-factoid earlier, perhaps results would have been different.

Mar
29

Mobile Madness – Elite Eight

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: iOS, Swift, Erica Sadun, and Jake Wharton. Here is your updated Bracket. We’re moving on to some strange pairings. We’re getting into the really abstract comparisons of what is “the best” here at Mobile Madness. Join us on this journey.

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Steve Ballmer vs Felix Krause

This is getting hard guys. The insane cult-of-personality that is Steve Ballmer or the straight up utility and approachability that is Felix Krause. Don’t make me make this choice!
Answer the twitter poll here


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Erica Sadun vs Jake Wharton

Ultimate indie expert battle – still iOS versus Android in this bracket. In one corner – Jake Wharton and his 1 billion excellent open source libraries and in the other corner Erica Sadun – Queen of Swift. Make your pick. If you can. Answer the twitter poll here


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Xcode vs AWS

Ok, whew, this bracket got weird. Let’s compare a development platform with a cloud service. Both are massive industry standards but which works better? Which is more integral to development?  Answer the twitter poll here


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iOS vs Swift

The parent or the child? What do you think of iOS as a platform in general? Is Swift its best incarnation? Is the future of iOS brighter with Swift? Can iOS win all bets as an innovator in its own field? I don’t knowwww! Answer the twitter poll here


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Mar
28

Mobile Madness – Round 2 (People and Code)

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: AWS, Xcode,  Felix Krause, and Steve Ballmer. Here is your updated Bracket.

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Limor Fried vs Erica Sadun

Software versus hardware, each of these women is dominating their field. Make your pick!
Answer the twitter poll here


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Jake Wharton vs Jake Marsh

Battle of the Jakes and at the same time battle of the iOS versus Android indie experts. Which Jake do you back?
Answer the twitter poll here


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iOS vs React Native

This is really a battle of native versus cross platform. Flexibility or doing it right? Which side are you on? Answer the twitter poll here


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Objective C vs Swift

Oh snap! Old school or new school? Have you dipped your toe into the new Apple paradigm? What do you think? Answer the twitter poll here


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Mar
23

Mobile Madness – The Code

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: Limor Fried, Erica Sadun, Jake Marsh, and Jake Wharton. Here is your updated Bracket.

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On to the third bracket of Mobile Madness 2016 with the numbers, the code, the languages and platforms. FULL STACK BABY!

First up: The Kings of the Mobile Kingdom

iOS vs Android

iOS and Android have been battling it out in the mobile space from day one. Globally, Android has a whopping 84.7% marketshare while iOS has only 13.1% (Q3 2015). Having multiple hardware manufacturers and OS distributions, Android provides many options to the end user, but at the cost of a consistent and reliable experience between them. iOS can deliver a high quality experience across all devices because Apple is fully in control of the design and production of their hardware and software, but it comes with a higher price point and fewer options.

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So which wins? Beauty or Breadth of Market? Answer the twitter poll here

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Second Bracket: Everything to Everyone: Cross Platform 

React Native vs Xamarin

React Native is a version of Facebook’s React.js, developers can write javascript that controls native UI elements among other things. React has been praised for it’s architectural design and the resulting increase in developer productivity. Xamarin, recently acquired by Microsoft, is a cross-platform development solution for writing native apps in C#. It comes with a robust IDE called Xamarin Studio that makes building cross-platform apps a breeze. One major difference between the two is that React Native is open source, while Xamarin is not only closed source, but requires a monthly subscription to use (but you get real support!).


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Who knew we’d bit pitting Facebook against Microsoft in a mobile development battle. What do you think of these unlikely platform contenders?  Answer the twitter poll here

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Third Bracket: Languages in the Key of C

Objective C vs C++

While both languages are in the C family, Objective-C and C++ have some huge differences. Objective-C is a dynamic language where everything compiles down to C code that uses the Objective-C runtime library. C++ is usually compiled to assembly and has no runtime library which means it’s generally much faster. Most Objective-C programs are now compiled with ARC which will manage memory for you, whereas a C++ developer must be very careful of how they allocate and free memory in their program. Objective-C has proven very productive for writing high-level code such as UI or business logic. C++ is less productive but much more powerful when you need to work at a low level, like when implementing high-performance graphics or audio processing.


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High brow or low power? Which C will it be? Answer the twitter poll here

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Fourth Bracket: Old Kids and New Kids

Java vs Swift

Java is generally accepted as the most widely used programming language today, and has been for some time. Swift is quite new on the scene, which only hit 1.0 in September, 2014. Swift has been acclaimed for it’s use of functional programming and value types which can help simplify problems in the minds of developers. Java works mostly with objects and reference types and only recently added functional programming capabilities through lambdas. Swift is entirely open source whereas only some Java implementation are (see OpenJDK). Swift still has much to prove for general use outside of iOS and Mac apps, but support from the open source community as well as big players like IBM is driving adoption for the language at a rapid pace.


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Answer the twitter poll here

Mar
22

Mobile Madness – The Indie Experts

The initial results are in and the winners are: Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Jony Ive and Felix Kraus. Here is your updated Bracket.

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On to the second bracket of Mobile Madness 2016 with a continuation of the people that contribute to the mobile landscape. Some of these indie darlings have made the jump to the big leagues but for the rest, they soldier on one awesome book, blog post, or tweet at a time.

First up: Master Makers

Ayah Bdeir vs Limor Fried

Ayah Bdeir is the founder and CEO of Little Bits everyone’s favorite snap and play electronics toys. We’ve been geeking over the space kit for a while now and constantly suggest these as a great intro-to-electronics. Limor Fried is the founder of Adafruit the one-stop shop for all the whosits and whatsits to make your maker-dreams come true. Adafruit materials power our christmas tree and gif tv (really!).

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So who build better tools for the builders? Big builders? Little builders? Answer the twitter poll here

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Second Bracket: All things Swift 

Natasha Murashev vs Erica Sadun

Natasha Murashev more commonly known as Natasha the Robot is everywhere all at once with her talks, advice, and tutorials on all things iOS. She’s been a key figure in brining Swift to the masses, including help organize the try! Swift conference. Meanwhile, Erica Sadun has been a major contributor when it comes to Apple’s latest language, Swift. While her skills with Swift are only matched by her wit, according to the Swift Evolution project, she has by far the highest number of accepted pull requests. You can be sure her ideas are not taken lightly in Cupertino.

Both are rocking it with the new Swift language and have build a massive following for their questions, comments, and observations.


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Who is the true education maven? Answer the twitter poll here

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Third Bracket: All things Android

Jake Wharton vs Roman Nurik

Jake thrust himself into the spotlight with his incredibly famous open source Android libraries such as ActionBarSherlock and NineOldAndroids, as well as his contributions to Square’s massive catalogue of open source libraries such as Butterknife and Retrofit. He continues to deliver enlightening talks and presentations about Android and its continued evolution as a platform. While also an experienced developer, Roman is most famous for his work with the UX aspect of Android development. As one of Google’s most popular designers, Roman helped bring the beauty of Material Design to the Android world. He has also crafted a collection of open source libraries focusing on improving user interactivity and experience with your Android projects.


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Answer the twitter poll here

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Fourth Bracket: iOS

Jake Marsh and Mattt Thompson

When it comes to iOS developers, Mattt with three Ts is virtually a household name. His brain children AFNetworking and NSHipster are still widely used and respected to this day. Go check out his other projects too for a host of other useful libraries and services. When it comes to the best tutorials in the shortest amount of time, Jake Marsh is your guy. His little bites of cocoa has become an overnight success, and is a great place to learn fun new iOS tricks that can be used in every day development. Both these guys have made their mark when it comes to contributing to the development community.

Answer the twitter poll here


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Feb
11

Swift – No longer the new kid in school

It’s been nearly two years since Apple debuted Swift, its successor to Objective-C for iOS and OS X development, and since then the Swift language has evolved considerably.  When Swift was first announced, fans and developers were overjoyed. Objective-C was notorious for its overly verbose syntax and general scariness for new app developers, while Swift was much cleaner and modern without sacrificing any meaningful functionality.  However, most professionals, including the crew here at LunarLincoln, hesitated to adopt Swift at its inception. The language, though shiny and new, was unstable and still maturing.

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Each Swift update brought forth the risk of breaking your existing code.  While Swift was incredibly fun for personal projects and smaller endeavors, it didn’t meet our needs for full-scale production. How would we explain to clients that we couldn’t complete a simple bug fix without totally updating their codebase to work with the latest version of Swift?

One year later – Swift 2.0

Apple open sourced the Swift programming language and implemented a heap of critical missing features like exception handling and protocol extensions.  The language had matured immensely in just one year and we felt it was finally ready for production use.

As of now, we’re still transitioning ourselves to a Swift mentality.  We’re doing our best to write all our new classes in Swift which is introducing all kinds of interesting problems that come with managing Objective-C and Swift in the same codebase.

While I still consider myself to be a Swift noob, I have to say I’m already a huge fan.  I love no longer needing to import class headers or having header files at all.  Wrapping my head around Optionals (pun intended) took a small bit of effort but using them in practice is helping me think about test cases I might have previously not considered.  Objective-C is still a crucial skill for even new iOS and OS X developers due to the sheer vastness of online resources, but I feel that it will slowly be phased out over the next few years.

And now I want to seize the low-hanging fruit that’s been dangling in front of me for this entire blog post.

For everybody on the fence about whether to jump to Swift, I’d say it’s time to get Schwifty!

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