Last weekend I was asked to come in to work and help out on a project they are working on. It’s an app for a client, it’s targeted for Android users. They just needed us to do some little ‘retouches’ and small bug fixes. I thought fair enough, sounds simple and easy, how difficult could that be? Well, I was mistaken. It’s a nightmare to go through someone else’s code, especially when you don’t have something like intellisense or code sense AND when four different programmers, all with different experience, agree that the code is really, really horrible and clumsy.

I went in to work on Saturday at about 1.30pm and stayed there till about 2am. I was working on the app and trying to iron out the ‘little’ bugs. At least I wasn’t alone, Ian was with me and we both were working on the app and at the same time had a laugh and made fun about how crappy the code and Android emulator is. It’s a pain in the backside to provide multiple device support, because you have to provide the correct images and dimensions etc. If something looks good on one device, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll look good on a different Android device.

The worst thing about all this was the emulator, it kept crashing all the time, for no apparent reason. It was totally random, we just couldn’t figure out a pattern as to when it would crash. I seriously wonder if Google has implemented a random generator inside the Android OS, deciding which error it will randomly throw out next time it runs!

We’re still working on the same app, we’re still trying to help them out with it. Slowly but surely we’ll get there.. one day.. maybe.. hopefully.

But anyways, at least now I can look forward to my next weekend, doing my coursework for the placement office. Yey..  :|

The answer? A drag and drop GUI builder.

The more I think about a drag and drop GUI builder, the more I think this final year project idea could be a success, mainly because currently there is no such thing available for Appcelerator’s platform, which makes it a pain to develop quick prototypes. You would have to write the GUI interface via code, which can be tedious and an overkill for a small test projects.

However, today this idea, this vision, bursted in thin air. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) someone submitted a ticket requesting if Appcelerator was interested in a ‘deal’ for the GUI builder they made, targeting the iOS platform. They even included a YouTube link showing the drag and drop features in action. It definitely is not the best editor. The way they implemented it just looks and ‘feels’ horrible. It’s not really robust either, I would have done a lot more to it, to make it user friendlier. However I guess it will be very welcomed to Appcelerator developers, nevertheless.

I guess I will have to think about something different now, something more awesome. I will need to find some more areas in which this company lacks.

Let’s go back in time to see why Americans celebrate this day, imagine how the world looked like a few thousand years ago. Pilgrims are people that were native English men and women from the United Kingdom. The government had a huge control over the citizens and inhabitants that lived there. Over the years, people had been forced to attend official services at the Church of England, if not, they would get arrested. The common public didn’t have any freedom of speech.

The pilgrims didn’t like this barbaric behavior anymore, so they took matters into their own hands. As far as I remember, they packed up on a ship, called the Mayflower, and grabbed some supplies to sail to the new world that Columbus had found. They promised themselves that they would repay the debts that the supplies had cost, once they have settled down.

Not everything went as planned, a misfortune had happened. They originally were heading to Baltimore, but strong winds started to blow in the wide ocean and caused the ship to go off course, and head towards Cape Cod, in northern US. The tragedy also caused one or two deaths, including one child, called Oceanus.

Once they arrived there, the native American-Indians helped them settle down, showed them how to grow crops, taught them how to fish and made sure the pilgrims survived throughout a very hard winter.

On that day, they celebrated a feast for peace between two groups/races. They thanked each other and for every blessing they had received. And up until this day, people still celebrate this happiness.

I am thankful for everything that I have in my life. My parents, my friends and my past teachers, without all these people, I wouldn’t be where I am today. My teachers have taught me a lot, education wise, my friends were always there to have a laugh with and my family was always there when I needed them. I am grateful for all the things that have happened, for all the people that have come and gone, in and out from my life. I really have learned a lot over the years and will always appreciate this blessing, not just today but every single day of my life.

What are you thankful for?

As I grew older, the environment around me kept changing. We’ve been moving houses, moving to different cities and we even moved to different countries (yup, I’ve been through it all ). Born in Pakistan, brought up in Germany and spent nearly half of my youth in the United Kingdom.

As time moves on, one typically starts to mature and learn more and more about the real world. You go to primary school, you go to high school, collage and eventually University. And this is exactly where I am right now in my life. I’m in my third year of Computer Games Programming, undergoing a placement year for 12 months in the industry.

I have been fortunate enough to be accepted for a placement abroad, at a company called Appcelerator, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, United States of America. This is probably the best thing that has happened to me so far, I mean, like I mentioned before, I love to travel and explore new places, and now I get to see and live the American Dream! How awesome is that!?

Moving countries isn’t a new thing for me, I already had to sacrifice all my previous friends once and I’m sure I will be able to live without seeing my current friends and family for 12 months. It’s not as if I’m going there permanently (or am I? You never know, ha! )

It’s crazy how one can jump from one place to another. I’m used to the fact that I’m just a normal student and that every professional person/company has a typical assumptions about me being an inexperienced newb. But when I finally started the placement, I suddenly played a major role, without me, the company could very easily just go downhill and loose a lot of its customers. It’s a very scary thought, but at the same time, it’s an amazing lifetime experience.

Being treated like ‘real’ adults and getting the same kinds of responsibilities as a ‘normal’ employee, is exactly what makes this placement, for me, just perfect. I will be gaining so much invaluable experience, which I couldn’t get from anywhere else.

For those who don’t know, Appcelerator is a company, which made it possible to ease the process of creating and managing cross-platform mobile and desktop applications. They are the creators behind the open-source Titanium SDK, which offers cross-platform development between Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as iOS, Android and Blackberry OS.

The most amazing thing about this SDK, is probably the fact that you don’t program in the native language using the native APIs for each platform, but instead you write your code once, and you adapt it everywhere. For mobile development, you use JavaScript and for desktop applications, you’ve got the option between Ruby, Python and PHP.

Even though you use web technology, you are still developing an app, which utilizes the native API calls of each platform. Let’s say, you are coding an app for iOS and Android using Titanium SDK and you want to create a button. You would only have to write it once, but it will work on both platforms. It will also display the native button, using the native API calls for each platform, meaning that the end user won’t notice a single thing if it’s programmed using 100% native Obj-C/Java or if it was programmed using JavaScript along with the Titanium SDK. This obviously, as you can imagine, saves tremendous amount of time and resources as well as being able to reach a wider target audience in half the time!

Like I was mentioning a few paragraphs ago, working at Appcelerator, for me, is a really awesome experience, so far. This is the first time that I am working full time; previously I only had a part time job at Toys R Us. My experience with them was really bad, nothing in particular, but just the way they treat their employees in general. You simply don’t have as much freedom or flexibility as I have been given here at Appcelerator. But anyway.. Toys R Us is still awesome for customers, especially for lil kids!

More to come later!

I finally got my blog up and running again. Hopefully this time it will have a lot more content and it’ll be a lot more fun!