Some years ago, I would say that this job title might have come under Middleware or Integration Engineer, or something like that, especially in big banks or firms like IBM. You might also try looking at job listings at a messaging vendor (e.g. Confluent).
Fascinated to read this post as I’m doing almost exactly the same thing. Just started using Xcode for the first time, a month ago. I’m not inexperienced with software development, but having to rely mostly on Xcode, Apple’s Developer documentation, information embedded inside WWDC videos, and random forum posts, has been a pretty rough experience.
So Claude has been a massive help, to get to a working app quickly. I am using it in a similar style to the author. Discuss in the UI, try really hard to cherry-pick from the code it generates, while trying to understand what it’s doing. Claude is not clever enough to realise it’s selling you out-of-date APIs, so i feel I need to be super vigilant, which chimes with what folk are saying here about the iOS upgrade treadmill. I’ve supplemented with a couple of technical ebooks as backup.
But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! (In my use case it needs to be an app not a PWA because it needs to integrate with device APIs.)
> But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for
years, is extremely rewarding!
It's great that you did this, kudos to you!
At the same time it is a little sad to read a statement like this. It used to be so natural for anyone doing software development to write things that improves their lives running on their own devices. Mobile has made this so much more tedious and then you need to ask for permission if you want to share the app.
Last year I also launched my own app on the app store [1], and briefly reflected on the experience [2].
Well I hope for Mozilla's sake that you two are representative of Mozilla's current and target userbase because their market share indicates otherwise.
They're not representative; I don't think anyone uses Pocket, except (maybe) those two people, even after ten years of aggressive pushing. And they don't ever let up with that pushing. Mozilla evidently doesn't care about Firefox's plumetting user base. I assume they're investing the Google dollars in other companies, unrelated to browsers.
> I don't think anyone uses Pocket, except (maybe) those two people
Sorry, where do you get off being such a douchebag?
You do realize Pocket existed before Mozilla bought it, right? I started using it back when it was still ReadItLater and it's an incredibly useful service. It's a decent way to collect interesting sites for later reading, as if tons of people on HN don't use various methods to do the same damn thing, but somehow it's suddenly bad because Mozilla owns it? Get lost.
At least when Mozilla buys a service, they continue it and improve it over time, instead of what everybody else does like Microsoft, Google, or whoever else, where they sunset whatever service or project it is and move the developers into other teams. Like, jesus fucking christ. Everybody else is doing wildly anti-competitive behavior, but here's Mozilla actually doing something decent, but fuck 'em right? We want tech companies to swallow smaller companies and extinguish them entirely. That's what we're all about in the tech industry.
I'm entitled to express a (hyperbolic) opinion without receiving personal abuse. FWIW, I haven't ever met anyone that uses it. And yet for years, it's been taking up screen real-estate, and nagging me to sign up. If anything's douchie, it's that.
And yes, I've been using Firefox long enough to know that Pocket was an acquisition.
You're right, sorry. That may have been a bit too much.
I don't agree that nobody uses it. A brief google search tells me that millions of people do use it and the surely inaccurate analytics sites I took a look at show millions of views a month. I disagree with a lot of what Mozilla does, but much of that involves the decisions they make directly affecting Firefox or projects like FirefoxOS or other weird stabs into the dark. Expanding available features for users is something I consider a good thing, that includes providing a decent VPN/proxy service and integrating Pocket.
Mozilla does a lot of things wrong, but imo, Pocket isn't one of them. In fact, if it provides a viable alternative to things like Google News, I see that as a net benefit for all of us.
How does one find out more about this scene, and more importantly does it actually provide you with enough income to live on? (Rent is expensive in cities)
There's not exactly a centralized directory of cool tech coops, but there's a few places that list some or where they hang out. [1] There's also a fair bunch of coop orientation in the XMPP/ActivityPub ecosystems.
Some projects are driven by direct donations, some others via grants (all NLNet-supported projects) and business partnerships (Blender foundation), some provide paid services to fund R&D (SourceHut).
Overall, it's technically possible to derive a decent income from such schemes, but that's not exactly widespread. Many dedicated hackers will work for minimum wage or less, but some will arrange either:
- to reduce their expenses, by moving to cheaper places [2] or living in shared flats or communities; if you're organized as a collective even food and furniture can have close-to-zero cost [3]
- or to have a high-wage part-time job on the side, or support contracts to pay the bills; if you get half-time to work on your pet projects, that's already quite an achievement
Overall, building a cooperative economy asks the question of where does the money go? The more autonomy we can achieve, and the more money we can "recycle" into other cooperatives, the less of our resources leak into the pockets of the 1%.
So yes, if you make a really cool project people appreciate and/or can depend on for their business, you can sure make a living out of it: just be sure to use copyleft licenses (eg. aGPLv3) so you're not scammed out of your work by big businesses. But personally, i'm more interested in non-profits driving R&D with a vision (like Framasoft does with the Degooglize Internet campaign and eg. Peertube/Mobilizon project).
[1] for example libreho.st, chatons.org (french-speaking) for hosting coops
[2] for example in France, if you don't insist on living in the big cities, you can find places to rent for close to free once you subtract housing support from the rent ; i guess the same is true in many places
[3] skipping unsold food from (super)markets or growing food in the backyard; we could also mention utility hacking for free electricity/water but i can't say most devs i know do that
I wonder if this is aimed at elderly folk or people with elderly relatives. It looks like a device (with dubious reviews!) that you can give to them, which they just plug in to their laptop. That seems more convenient than setting up some software, especially if they live far away.
I’ve had an X1 Carbon for almost 2 years now as a development machine, and I really like it. My previous laptop was a 13” MBP.
The X1 is light and fast. I run Fedora, and work often in containers. I have the likes of Podman, VS Code, IntelliJ and Atom running and many Firefox tabs open, all without any problems.
Other good points are the 2xUSB ports, HDMI, and good battery life.
The main downside is the 256GB HDD, which fills up far too quickly, so I end up having to do a bit of housekeeping quite often. But as a dev machine, I can recommend it.
If you want to work in a RHEL-like environment (use a similar package manager, configuration, and so on), then you could look at Fedora (Workstation edition), which is in the same branch of the Linux family tree as RHEL.
Fedora/RHEL uses RPMs to install software, so you can check in advance whether your favourite application offers an RPM. Most of the major dev tools do, including VS Code, etc.
But whichever distro you choose for your desktop OS, you can still try out other distros by running them inside a container.
Linus Torwalds says he uses Fedora.
I don't see why you would use Fedora instead of Centos / Oracle Linux / RHEL free dev subscription.
Maybe because Fedora gets the cool things first before other get them. For testing.
It took them a while to wake up, but I think Argos is better now. You can collect from stores, get it delivered, sometimes even same-day delivery. I value having a store nearby. I trust them far more for commodity products (chargers, accessories, etc) than venturing into the Wild West of Amazon sellers and reviews. I also feel I have more recourse if something goes wrong.
A mini-tripod for a camera phone. It is one of the cheapest things I've bought (<£20 I think), but I've got way more value out of it than most purchases. It can hold a phone vertically or horizontally, and the head and feet are very adjustable. Perfect for joining work/social video calls, recording videos, or taking photos, I just love it.
