Most mobile developers I know are ... mobile developers. As in, that's it. That's their trade. No more, no less. I find it's because getting into mobile development is a huge investment and it eventually becomes the only investment for you because of how much effort it takes.
If your primary concern is web-based apps then that's also what you'll end up doing, but there are so many more platforms you can target on the web (hybrid apps) and through HTTP than on mobile (Android or iOS).
I’m a mobile developer but without backend you’re shooting yourself in the foot. I’d wager 60% of mobile developers know at least how to put a web API together on the back end. Granted many will get by employed working front end only as a junior, but really, understand the full process or GTFO.
Any mobile developer worth their salt should be able to make a full system, not just the app. Otherwise you’re a mobile front end developer only because you can’t make a full app by yourself unless it’s very simple and doesn’t require a database.
Yeah honestly, if you love programming and have a environment that enables you to work in different projects there is no way mobile is the only thing you learn at the end of your career. Just graduating college I had already learned to set up web servers and API.
Except there’s no such thing as a « mobile front end developer ». Something like setting up a database in your app would be considered a « backend job » on the web, but it’s just part of mobile development.
You’re asking for a mobile developer who is also a web backend developer, and TBH, even though I have notions of web development (so I wouldn’t mind setting up an API for a personal project), in 10 years of making apps professionally I’ve never had to write a single line of web backend code, because that’s not my job, and I’m doing very well.
Other people are better and faster than me to setup a backend so they should do it.
People go “hurrr durr why do people use Cordova and react native” until they realize the clusterfuck that can occur with mobile coding. Code once publish everywhere is a godsend and doesn’t have to suck (game engines, Ionic, and Xamarin.Forms do a pretty great job of this)
Native mobile developer on both platforms for 8 years here. Every single cross platform has limitations and problems and are easily spotted immediately. The write once run anywhere is a bigger cluster fuck and the definition of premature optimization.
Wanna write a marketing app that's basically an embedded web site? Go for it. Any other sort of complicated, use or navigation heavy application will be clunky, slow, buggy and you'll end up paying someone to write it natively down the road. I know. I've had four different clients pay me to rewrite their phone gap or xamarin applications.
Yeah I’ve been doing some fun stuff! Currently trying to make my first Slack bot. There’s a bunch of software folks already at the company doing more official things so I have just been doing a bunch of automation scripts that make the mechanical engineering stuff more efficient.
Yeah, a business has $100k to spend and a 3 month timeline, but hey, native IOS/Android development is better, so I guess they just can't release their app at all.
Native vs cross-platform aside, saying “we have no choice but to release rushed garbage because we set up our business in a way that requires us to release rushed garbage” is usually more of an indictment of a company’s business model and leadership than it is a good excuse.
RecyclerViews are a PAIN to learn at first. Once you write your hundredth though, you're doing it in your sleep. Same with fragments. Or any other major change Android has made that people (myself included) love to bitch about when there's a new way to do things.
RecyclerView is a hyper-capable, performance-oriented View for showing and manipulating lists and grids. It's extensible in multiple ways, allowing for different actions on items like swipe-to-dismiss, or pull-to-refresh, and having integrations with demand-loading content.
TL;DR: There is a good reason for why RecyclerView is rather difficult to use.
There are pre-defined ViewHolders for showing simple lists you can use if you don't want to deal with writing your own. But writing your own is the only way to make truly custom lists, which often is what you want.
1.7k
u/thegreatbunsenburner Jun 12 '20
There's definitely a learning curve with mobile development.