Tech Guides - Mobile

Kotlin is a statically typed programming language for JVM, Android, and browser. Kotlin is a new programming language from JetBrains, the maker of the world’s best IDEs. Why Kotlin? Before we jump into the benefits of Kotlin, we need to understand how Kotlin originated and evolved. We already have many programming languages, but how has Kotlin emerged to capture programmers’ heart? A 2013 study showed that language features matter little compared withecosystem issues when developers evaluate programming languages. Kotlin compiles to JVM bytecode or JavaScript. It is not a language you will write a kernel in. It is of the greatest interest to people who work with Java today, although it could appeal to all programmers who use a garbage-collected runtime, including people who currently use Scala, Go, Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. Kotlin comes from industry, not academia. It solves problems faced by working programmers and developers today. As an example, the type system helps you avoid null pointer exceptions. Research languages tend to just not have null at all, but this is of no use to people working with large codebases and APIs that do. Kotlin costs nothing to adopt! It’s open source, but that’s not the point. It means that there’s a high quality, one-click Java to Kotlin converter tool(available in Android Studio), and a strong focus on Java binary compatibility. You can convert an existing Java project, one file at a time, and everything will still compile, even for complex programs that run up to millions of lines of code. Kotlin programs can use all existing Java frameworks and libraries, even advanced frameworks that rely on annotation processing. The interop is seamless and does not require wrappers or adapter layers. It integrates with Maven, Gradle, and other build systems. It is approachable and it can be learned in a few hours by simply reading the language reference. The syntax is clean and intuitive. Kotlin looks a lot like Scala, but it’s simpler. The language balances terseness and readability as well.It also enforces no particular philosophy of programming, such as overly functional or OOP styling. Combined with the appearance of frameworks like Anko and Kovenant, this resource lightness means Kotlin has become popular among Android developers. You can read a report written by a developer at Square on their experience with Kotlin and Android. Kotlin features Let's summarize why it’s the right time to jump from native Java to Kotlin Java. Concise: Drastically reduces the amount of boilerplate code you need to write. Safe: Avoid entire classes of errors, such as null pointer exceptions. Versatile: Build server-side applications, Android apps, or frontend code running in the browser. Interoperable: Leverage existing frameworks and libraries of the JVM with 100% Java Interoperability. Brief discussion Let’s discuss a few important features in detail. Functional programming support Functional programming is not easy, at least in the beginning, until it becomes fun. There arezero-overhead lambdas and the ability to do mapping, folding, etc. over standard Java collections. The Kotlin type system distinguishes between mutable and immutable views over collections. Function purity The concept of a pure function (a function that does not have side effects) is the most important functional concept, which allows us to greatly reduce code complexity and get rid of most mutable states. Higher-order functions Higher-order Functions either take functions as parameters, return functions, or both.Higher-order functions are everywhere. You just pass functions to collections to make the code easy to read.titles.map{ it.toUpperCase()}reads like plain English. Isn’t it beautiful? Immutability Immutability makes it easier to write, use, and reason about the code (class invariant is established once and then unchanged). The internal state of your app components will be more consistent. Kotlin enforces immutability by introducingvalkeyword as well as Kotlin collections, which are immutable by default. Once thevalor a collection is initialized, you can be sure about its validity. Null safety Kotlin’s type system is aimed at eliminating the danger of null references from code, also known as The Billion Dollar Mistake. One of the most common pitfalls in many programming languages, including Java, is that of accessing a member of null references, resulting in null reference exceptions. In Java, this would be the equivalent toa NullPointerException, or NPE for short. In Kotlin, the type system distinguishes between references that can hold null (nullable references) and those that can't (non-null references).For example, a regular variable of type String can’t hold null: var a: String = “abc” a = null // compilation error To allow nulls, you can declare a variable as a nullable string, written String?: var b: String? = “abc” b = null // ok Anko DSL for Android Anko DSL for Android is a great library, which significantly simplifies working with views, threads, and Android lifecycle. The GitHub description states that Anko is a “Pleasant Android application development” and it truly has proven to be so. Removing ButterKnife dependency In Kotlin, you can just reference your view property by its @id XML parameter;these properties would have the same name as declared in your XML file. More info can be found in official docs. Smart casting // Java if (node instanceOf Tree) { return ((Tree) node).symbol; } // kotlin if (node is Tree) { returnnode.symbol; // Smart casting, no need of casting } if (document is Payable &&document.pay()) { // Smart casting println(“Payable document ${document.title} was payed for.”) } Kotlin uses lazy evaluation just like in Java. So, if the document were not a Payable, the second part would not be evaluated in the first place. Hence, if evaluated, Kotlin knows that the document is a Payable and uses a smart cast. Try it now! Like many modern languages, Kotlin has a way to try it out via your web browser. Unlike those other languages, Kotlin’s tryout site is practically a full-blown IDE that features fast autocompletion, real-time background compilation, and even online static analysis! TRY IT NOW About the author HariVigneshJayapalan is a Google Certified Android App developer, IDF Certified UI &UX Professional, street magician, fitness freak, technology enthusiast, and a wannabe entrepreneur.

The hype and rise of progressive web apps are tremendous. A PWA is basically a web application that feels like a native application to the user. By making your app a PWA, not only do you acquire new users, but you can also retain them for longer. Here’s a quick rundown of all things good about a PWA. Reliable: Loads instantly even under poor network conditions. Lighting fast and app-like: Responds to the user’s actions with speed and with a smooth interaction. Engaging and responsive: Gives the feeling that it was made specifically for that device, but it should be able to work across all platforms. Protected and secure: Served over HTTPS to make sure the contents of the app are not messed with. If you’re not already developing your next app as a PWA, here are 5 reasons why you should do that asap. And if you’re confused about choosing the best framework for developing your PWA, here are the top 3 frameworks available to make your next app a PWA. Ionic Ionic is one of the most popular frameworks for building a progressive web app. Let’s look at a few reasons why you should choose Ionic as your PWA framework Free and open-source:  Ionic is open source, and licensed under MIT. Open-source means developers can manage the code structure easily, saving time, money and efforts. They also have a worldwide community forum to connect with other Ionic developers, ask questions, and help out others. Cross-platform and one-codebase: Ionic allows seamless building of apps across popular operating systems, such as Android, iOS and Windows. It has a one codebase feature. This means apps are deployed through Apache Cordova with a single code base, and the application adapts automatically to the device it is functioning in. Rich UI: Ionic is equipped with pre-built components that are used to customize design themes and elements. It is based on SASS UI, with rich features to create fast, robust, interactive, native-like applications. Powerful functionality: Ionic is supported by Angular. The component API of Angular helps developers create interactive hybrid and web apps. Ionic is equipped with Cordova Plugins for accessing various native features, like Camera, GPS, and so on. It also features a powerful CLI for building, testing and deploying apps across multiple platforms. Read our Hybrid Mobile Development with Ionic to build a complete, professional-quality, hybrid mobile application with Ionic. You can also checkout Hybrid Mobile apps: What you need to know, for a quick rundown of all that is to know about a Hybrid mobile app. Polymer Google’s Polymer App Toolbox is another contender for the development of PWAs. It is a collection of web components, tools, and templates for building Progressive Web Apps. Blends PWAs with Web components Polymer allows developers to architect a component-based web app using Polymer and Web Components. Web components can form encapsulated and reusable custom HTML elements. They are independent of the frameworks because they are made of pure HTML/CSS/JS, unlike framework-dependent UI components in React/Angular. The web components are provided through a light-weight Polymer Library for creating framework-independent, custom components. More features include: Responsive design using the app layout components. Modular routing using the <app-route> elements. Localization with <app-localize-behavior>. Turnkey support for local storage with app storage elements. Offline caching as a progressive enhancement, using service workers. Build tooling to support serving the app multiple ways: unbundled for delivery over HTTP/2 with server push, and bundled for delivery over HTTP/1. Each component whether used separately or together can be used to build a full-featured Progressive web app. Most importantly, each component is additive. For a simple app one only needs the app-layout. As it gets more complicated, developers can add routing, offline caching, and a high-performance server as required. Read our Getting Started with Polymer book to create responsive web apps using Polymer. Angular Angular, probably the most popular front-end web application platform, can also be used to make robust, reliable, and responsive PWAs. Before the release of version 5, supporting progressive web apps in Angular required a lot of expertise on the developers’ part.Version 5 comes equipped with a new version of the Angular Service Worker for built-in PWA support. Angular 6 (released a few days back) has two new CLI commands. Both these versions make it very simple to make web application downloadable and installable, just like a native mobile application. Service Worker Updates With Angular 5 the development of Service Workers is becoming significantly easier. By using Angular CLI developers can choose to add Service Worker functionality by default. The Angular Service Worker functionality is provided by the module @angular/service-worker. Service worker can power up an application by only providing some JSON configuration instead of writing the code manually. The key difference with other service worker generators (like Workbox, sw-precache) is the fact, that you do not re-generate the service worker file itself, you only update its control file. New CLI commands Angular 6, also introduces two new commands apart from the service worker updates. The first, ng update, is a CLI command for updating dependencies and code. The second command, ng add, supports turning applications into progressive web apps, which support offline web pages. Apart from these frameworks, React is also a good alternative. Backed by Facebook, it has a Create-React-App generator which is the official scaffolding tool to generate a Reactjs App. Get started with Scott Domes's Progressive Web Apps with React as your first step for building PWA applications. Yet another popular choice, would be Webpack. Webpack plugins can generate the service worker and manifest required for a PWA to be registered. It uses a Google project called Workbox which provides tools that help make offline support for web apps easier to set up. The bottom line is that the frameworks for building progressive web apps are growing and expanding at a rapid rate with regular updates every couple of months. Choosing a particular framework thus doesn’t make much difference to the app behavior. It only depends on the developer’s area of interest and expertise. Windows launches progressive web apps… that don't yet work on mobile How to Secure and Deploy an Android App How Android app developers can convert iPhone apps

In this post we will learn how to use some of Swift's functional features to write more concise and expressive code using RxSwift, a reactive programming framework, to manage application states and concurrent tasks. Swift and its functional features Swift can be described as a modern object-oriented language with native support for generic programming. Although it is not a functional language, it has some features that allows us to program using a functional approach, like closures, functions as first-class types, and immutable value types. Nevertheless, Cocoa Touch is an object-oriented framework and bares the constraints that this paradigm enforces. Typical issues that arise in software development projects include managing shared application state and concurrent asynchronous tasks that compete for the data that resides there. Functional programming solves these problems by privileging the immutable state and defining application logic as expressions that do not change during the application's lifecycle. By defining self-contained functions, computations can be easily parallelized and concurrency issues minimized. The Reactive Model The reactive programming model has its roots in FRP (functional reactive programming), which shifts the paradigm from discrete, imperative, command-driven programming to a series of transformations that can be applied to a stream of inputs continously over time. While that might sound like a mouthful, there's nothing quite like a simple example to get a feel for what this means. Expressing a relationship between variables Let's say you have two variables (A and B) whose value changes over the running time of an application, and a third one (C) that derives its own value based on the previous two. 1. var A = 10 2. var B = 20 3. let C = A * 2 + B 4. 5. // Current Values 6. // A = 10, B = 20, C = 40 7. 8. A = 0 9. 10. // Current Values 11. // A = 0, B = 20, C = 40 The definition of C with regards to A and B is evaluated only once, when the assignment operation is executed. The relationship between them is lost immediatly after that. Changing A or B from then on will have no effect on the value of C. At any given moment, to evaluate that expression you must reassign the value of C and calculate it once again, based on the current values of A and B. How would we do this in a reactive programming approach? In the reactive model, we would create two streams that propagate changes in the values of either A or B over time. Each value change is represented as a signal in its corresponding stream. We then combine both streams and assign a transformation that we want to perform on each signal emitted, thus creating a new stream that will emit only transformed values. The usual way to demonstrate this is using Marbles Diagrams, where each line represents the continuity of time and each marble an event that occurs at a determined point in time: Reacting in Cocoa Touch To address this in Cocoa Touch, you could use Key-Value Observing to add observers to the changing variables and handle them when the KVO system notifies you: self.addObserver(self, forKeyPath:"valueA", options: .New, context: nil) self.addObserver(self, forKeyPath:"valueB", options: .New, context: nil) override func observeValueForKeyPath(keyPath: String?, ofObject object: AnyObject?, change: [String : AnyObject]?, context: UnsafeMutablePointer<Void>) { let C = valueA * 2 + valueB } If your variables are tied to the user interface, in UIKit you could define a handler that is invoked when change events are triggered: sliderA.addTarget(self, action: "update", forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.ValueChanged) sliderB.addTarget(self, action: "update", forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.ValueChanged) func update() { let C = sliderA.value * 2 + sliderB.value } But none of these approaches define a persistent and explicit relationship between the variables involved, their lifecycle, and the events that change their value. We can overcome this with a reactive programming model. There are a couple of different implementations currently available for OS X and iOS development such as RxSwift and ReactiveCocoa. We will focus on RxSwift but the basic concepts we address are similar in both frameworks. RxSwift RxSwift extends the Observer pattern to simulate asynchronous streams of data flowing out of your Cocoa Touch objects as if they were typical collections. By extending some of Cocoa Touch's classes with observable streams, you are able to subscribe to their output and use them with composable operations, such as filter(), merge(), map(), reduce(), and others. Returning to our previous example, let's say we have an iOS application with two sliders (sliderA and sliderB) and we wish to continously update a label (labelC) with the same expression we used before (A * 2 + B): 1. combineLatest(sliderA.rx_value, sliderB.rx_value) { 2. $0 * 2 + $1 3. }.map { 4. "Sum of slider values is ($0)" 5. }.bindTo(labelC.rx_text)  We take advantage of the rx_value extension of the UISlider class that transforms the slider's value property into an observable type that emits an item when its value changes. By applying the combineLatest() operation on both slider's observable types, we create a new observable type that emits items whenever any of its source streams emits an item. The resulting emission is a tuple with both slider's values that can be transformed in the operation callback (line 2). Then, we map the transformed value into an informative string (line 4) and bind its value to our label (line 5). By composing three independent operations (combineLatest(), map() and bindTo()) we were able to concisely express a relationship between three objects and continuously update our application's UI, reacting accordingly to changes in the application state. What's next? We are only scratching the surface on what you can do with RxSwift. In the sample source code, you will find an example on how to download online resources using chainable asynchronous tasks. Be sure to check it out if this article sparked your curiosity. Then take some time to read the documentation and learn about the several other API extensions that will help you develop iOS apps in a more functional and expressive way. Discover how patterns in Swift can help you to deal with a large number of similar objects in our article Using the Flyweight Pattern. About the author Milton Moura (@mgcm) is a freelance iOS developer based in Portugal. He has worked professionally in several industries, from aviation to telecommunications and energy and is now fully dedicated to creating amazing applications using Apple technologies. With a passion for design and user interaction, he is also very interested in new approaches to software development. You can find out more at http://defaultbreak.com

Today, mobile app development has come a long way, it isn’t the same as it used to be. In earlier days, the development process included only simple decisions such as design, features and the cost of creating the app. But, this scenario has changed now. Nowadays, mobile application development starts with the selection of the right app development framework. There are lots of options to choose from like Flutter, AngularJS, Ionic, React Native, etc. In this post, we are going to compare two powerful mobile app development frameworks: Ionic and React Native, to figure out the best option for your app development needs. React Native - An introduction React native is developed by Facebook using JavaScript which is one of the most popular languages used by mobile developers. React Native allows creating high-end applications for specific operating systems. Developers can reuse the code from this framework and don’t need to build an application from scratch. This is a helpful tool to create applications for Android and iOS operating systems. Features and benefits of React Native As it is reusable across Android and iOS, it saves development time and cost. With virtual-DOM support, it allows viewing changes in real time. There is a huge community of React native developers. Code written by one developer can be read, studied, understood and extended easily by other developers. Once the code is developed,  it can be used on iOS and Android. Issues with React Native apps for Android or iOS can be resolved quickly. It’s consistently improving and with every new release app development becomes interesting and convenient. Ionic - An introduction Ionic is developed by Drifty using TypeScript. It’s an open-source platform for developing hybrid mobile applications using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS technologies. Apps built with the Ionic framework are mainly focused on the UI, appearance, and feel. As it utilizes a combination of Apache Cordova and Angular, Ionic for many developers, is the first choice for app development. It provides tools such as HTML5, CSS, SaaS, etc to develop top-notch hybrid mobile apps to be run on Windows, Android, and iOS. Features and benefits of Ionic Ionic is an open source framework used for developing hybrid mobile applications. It is built on top of AngularJS and Apache Cordova. Ionic Framework comes with a command line interface (CLI) that empowers developers to build and test apps on any platform. It offers all the functionalities that are available with native app development SDKs to allows to develop apps and customize them for the different OS then deploy through Cordova. Apps require one-time development with Ionic and can be deployed on Android, iOS and Windows platforms. Facility to build apps using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript technologies. The apps developed with Ionic are majorly focused on UI to provide the better user experience. It offers a multitude of exciting elements to choose from for development. Ionic 4 is the newest release of Ionic so far. The release is a complete rebuild of the popular JavaScript framework for developing mobile and desktop apps. Although Ionic has, up until now, been using Angular components, this new version has instead been built using Web Components. This is significant, as it changes the whole ball game for the project. It means the Ionic Framework is now an app development framework that can be used alongside any front end frameworks, not just Angular. React Native Vs Ionic: A comparison The following table below shows the difference between these two on different bases. Basis for comparison React Native Ionic Ease of learning Due to a few pre-developed elements, learning takes time. With plenty of pre-developed and pre-designed elements, learning is easier and shorter. Code language JSX (A syntax extension to JavaScript used to optimize code before compilation into JS) TypeScript (A typed superset of JavaScript for compiling clean and simple JS code on any browser) Code reusability It allows using the same code to develop Windows, Android, and iOS mobile apps. Same code can be utilized for creating apps for iOS, Android, Windows as well as web and PWA. Performance It has excellent performance as it doesn’t use WebView. The performance is average because it uses WebView. Community support Strong Strong Ease of development React follows the approach, ‘learn once write anywhere’ Written only once, it can be executed on any platform Phone hardware accessibility To access phone hardware Apache Cordova is used. No third Party tool is required to access phone hardware. Code testing An emulator or real mobile is needed for testing. Apps can be tested on any web browser. Documentation Very basic documentation Quite simple, clear and consistent documentation Developer Facebook Drifty.co By now, you must have obtained knowledge about the basic differences between Ionic and React Native. Both these frameworks are different from each other and they provide distinguishing features. Let us now further investigate both frameworks based on some board parameters Performance Android apps developed with React Native usually have a better performance score than ones developed with Ionic. This is because Ionic uses web-view in mobile app development and this is not the case with React Native framework. Design Ionic comes with plenty of pre-developed elements that allows creating elegant apps with excellent UI. This is what makes Ionic beat React Native when it comes to design. React Native offers a few pre-developed elements as compared to Ionic. Cost Developing apps with Ionic is cheaper than developing with React Native. This is because, in Ionic, the same code can be utilized across different platforms. Final words So which technology you should use? Well, this is not easy to tell. There are several factors you can consider like cost, features, requirements, platforms, and team size when deciding the best app development framework. They both serve different purposes and choosing any of them may be easy. If you a low budget then Ionic can be your choice to build an appealing application with a good performance. On the other hand, React Native lets you build native-like apps but the cost of development may be much than Ionic. Depending on your requirements and preferences, you can decide to choose any of the frameworks. Author-Bio David Meyer is a senior web developer at CSSChopper, a front end, and custom web development company catering customers across the globe. David has a passion for web development and likes to share his knowledge through informative blogs and articles.

Superior user experience is becoming increasingly important for businesses as it helps them to engage users and boost brand loyalty. Front-end website and app development platforms, namely Bootstrap vs Material Design empower developers to create websites with a robust structure and advanced functionality, thereby delivering outstanding business solutions and unbeatable user experience. Both Twitter’s Bootstrap vs Material Design are used by developers to create functional and high-quality websites and apps. If you are an aspiring front-end developer, here’s a direct comparison between the two, so you can choose the one that’s better suited for your upcoming project. BootStrap Bootstrap is an open-source, intuitive, and powerful framework used for responsive mobile-first solutions on the web. For several years, Bootstrap has helped developers create splendid mobile-ready front-end websites. In fact, Bootstrap is the most popular  CSS framework as it’s easy to learn and offers a consistent design by using re-usable components. Let’s dive deeper into the pros and cons of Bootstrap. Pros High speed of development If you have limited time for the website or app development, Bootstrap is an ideal choice. It offers ready-made blocks of code that can get you started within no time. So, you don’t have to start coding from scratch. Bootstrap also provides ready-made themes, templates, and other resources that can be downloaded and customized to suit your needs, allowing you to create a unique website as quickly as possible. Bootstrap is mobile first Since July 1, 2019, Google started using mobile-friendliness as a critical ranking factor for all websites. This is because users prefer using sites that are compatible with the screen size of the device they are using. In other words, they prefer accessing responsive sites. Bootstrap is an ideal choice for responsive sites as it has an excellent fluid grid system and responsive utility classes that make the task at hand easy and quick. Enjoys  a strong community support Bootstrap has a huge number of resources available on its official website and enjoys immense support from the developers’ community. Consequently, it helps all developers fix issues promptly. At present, Bootstrap is being developed and maintained on GitHub by Mark Otto, currently Principal Design & Brand Architect at GitHub, with nearly 19 thousand commits and 1087 contributors. The team regularly releases updates to fix any new issues and improve the effectiveness of the framework. For instance, currently, the Bootstrap team is working on releasing version 4.3 that will drop jQuery for regular JavaScript. This is primarily because jQuery adds 30KB to the webpage size and is tricky to configure with bundlers like Webpack. Similarly, Flexbox is a new feature added to the Bootstrap 4 framework. In fact, Bootstrap version 4 is rich with features, such as a Flexbox-based grid, responsive sizing and floats, auto margins, vertical centering, and new spacing utilities. Further, you will find plenty of websites offering Bootstrap tutorials, a wide collection of themes, templates, plugins, and user interface kit that can be used as per your taste and nature of the project. Cons All Bootstrap sites look the same The Twitter team introduced Bootstrap with the objective of helping developers use a standardized interface to create websites within a short time. However, one of the major drawbacks of this framework is that all websites created using this framework are highly recognizable as Bootstrap sites. Open Airbnb, Twitter, Apple Music, or Lyft. They all look the same with bold headlines, rounded sans-serif fonts, and lots of negative space. Bootstrap sites can be heavy Bootstrap is notorious for adding unnecessary bloat to websites as the files generated are huge in size. This leads to longer loading time and battery draining issues. Further, if you delete them manually, it defeats the purpose of using the framework. So, if you use this popular front-end UI library in your project, make sure you pay extra attention to page weight and page speed. May not be suitable for simple websites Bootstrap may not be the right front-end framework for all types of websites, especially the ones that don’t need a full-fledged framework. This is because, Bootstrap’s theme packages are incredibly heavy with battery-draining scripts. Also, Bootstrap has CSS weighing in at 126KB and 29KB of JavaScript that can increase the site’s loading time. In such cases, Bootstrap alternatives, namely Foundation, Skeleton, Pure, and Semantic UI adaptable and lightweight frameworks that can meet your developmental needs and improve your site’s user-friendliness. Material Design When compared to Bootstrap vs Material Design is hard to customize and learn. However, this design language was introduced by Google in 2014 with the objective of enhancing Android app’s design and user interface. The language is quite popular among developers as it offers a quick and effective way for web development. It includes responsive transitions and animations, lighting and shadows effects, and grid-based layouts. When developing a website or app using Material Design, designers should play to its strengths but be wary of its cons. Let’s see why. Pros Offers numerous components  Material Design offers numerous components that provide a base design, guidelines, and templates. Developers can work on this to create a suitable website or application for the business. The Material Design concept offers the necessary information on how to use each component. Moreover, Material Design Lite is quite popular for its customization. Many designers are creating customized components to take their projects to the next level. Is compatible across various browsers Both Bootstrap vs Material Design have a sound browser compatibility as they are compatible across most browsers. Material Design supports Angular Material and React Material User Interface. It also uses the SASS preprocessor. Doesn’t require JavaScript frameworks Bootstrap completely depends on JavaScript frameworks. However, Material Design doesn’t need any JavaScript frameworks or libraries to design websites or apps. In fact, the platform provides a material design framework that allows developers to create innovative components such as cards and badges. Cons The animations and vibrant colors can be distracting Material Design extensively uses animated transitions and vibrant colors and images that help bring the interface to life. However, these animations can adversely affect the human brain’s ability to gather information. It is affiliated to Google Since Material Design is a Google-promoted framework, Android is its prominent adopter. Consequently, developers looking to create apps on a platform-independent UX may find it tough to work with Material Design. However, when Google introduced the language, it had broad vision for Material Design that encompasses many platforms, including iOS. The tech giant has several Google Material Design components for iOS that can be used to render interesting effects using a flexible header, standard material colors, typography, and sliding tabs Carries performance overhead Material Design extensively uses animations that carry a lot of overhead. For instance, effects like drop shadow, color fill, and transform/translate transitions can be jerky and unpleasant for regular users. Wrapping up: Should you use Bootstrap vs Material Design for your next web or app development project? Bootstrap is great for responsive, simple, and professional websites. It enjoys immense support and documentation, making it easy for developers to work with it. So, if you are working on a project that needs to be completed within a short time, opt for Bootstrap. The framework is mainly focused on creating responsive, functional, and high-quality websites and apps that enhance the user experience. Notice how these websites have used Bootstrap to build responsive and mobile-first sites. (Source: cssreel) (Source: Awwwards) Material Design, on the other hand, is specific as a design language and great for building websites that focus on appearance, innovative designs, and beautiful animations. You can use Material Design for your portfolio sites, for instance. The framework is pretty detailed and straightforward to use and helps you create websites with striking effects. Check out how these websites and apps use the customized themes, popups, and buttons of Material Design. (Source:  Nimbus 9) (Source: Digital Trends) What do you think? Which framework works better for you? Bootstrap vs Material Design. Let us know in the comments section below. Author Bio Gaurav Belani is a Senior SEO and Content Marketing Analyst at The 20 Media, a Content Marketing agency that specializes in data-driven SEO. He has more than seven years of experience in Digital Marketing and along with that loves to read and write about AI, Machine Learning, Data Science and much more about the emerging technologies. In his spare time, he enjoys watching movies and listening to music. Connect with him on Twitter and Linkedin. Material-UI v4 releases with CSS specificity, Classes boilerplate, migration to Typescript and more Warp: Rust’s new web framework Learn how to Bootstrap a Spring application [Tutorial] Bootstrap 5 to replace jQuery with vanilla JavaScript How to use Bootstrap grid system for responsive website design?  

In this article, we will talk about the Android Model particularly the Linux Kernel layer, over which Android is built. We will also talk about Android's security features and offerings and how Linux plays a role to secure Android OS. This article is taken from the book Practical Mobile Forensics - Third Edition by Rohit Tamma et al. In this book, you will investigate, analyze, and report iOS, Android, and Windows devices. The Android architecture Android is open source and the code is released under the Apache license. Practically, this means anyone (especially device manufacturers) can access it, freely modify it, and use the software according to the requirements of any device. This is one of the primary reasons for its wide acceptance. Notable players that use Android include Samsung, HTC, Sony, and LG. As with any other platform, Android consists of a stack of layers running one above the other. To understand the Android ecosystem, it's essential to have a basic understanding of what these layers are and what they do. The following figure summarizes the various layers involved in the Android software stack: Android architecture Each of these layers performs several operations that support specific operating system functions. Each layer provides services to the layers lying on top of it. The Linux kernel layer Android OS is built on top of the Linux kernel, with some architectural changes made by Google. There are several reasons for choosing the Linux kernel. Most importantly, Linux is a portable platform that can be compiled easily on different hardware. The kernel acts as an abstraction layer between the software and hardware present on the device. Consider the case of a camera click. What happens when you take a photo using the camera button on your device? At some point, the hardware instruction (pressing a button) has to be converted to a software instruction (to take a picture and store it in the gallery). The kernel contains drivers to facilitate this process. When the user presses on the button, the instruction goes to the corresponding camera driver in the kernel, which sends the necessary commands to the camera hardware, similar to what occurs when a key is pressed on a keyboard. In simple words, the drivers in the kernel command control the underlying hardware. The Linux kernel is responsible for managing the core functionality of Android, such as process management, memory management, security, and networking. Linux is a proven platform when it comes to security and process management. Android has taken leverage of the existing Linux open source OS to build a solid foundation for its ecosystem. Each version of Android has a different version of the underlying Linux kernel. The Marshmallow Android version is known to use Linux kernel 3.18.10, whereas the Nougat version is known to use Linux kernel 4.4.1. Android security Android was designed with a specific focus on security. Android as a platform offers and enforces certain features that safeguard the user data present on the mobile through multi-layered security. There are certain safe defaults that will protect the user, and certain offerings that can be leveraged by the development community to build secure applications. The following are issues that are to be kept in mind while incorporating Android security controls: Protecting user-related data Safeguarding the system resources Making sure that one application cannot access the data of another application The next few sections will help us understand more about Android's security features and offerings. Secure kernel Linux has evolved as a trusted platform over the years, and Android has leveraged this fact using it as its kernel. The user-based permission model of Linux has, in fact, worked well for Android. As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of specific code built into the Linux kernel. With each Android version release, the kernel version has also changed. The following table shows Android versions and their corresponding kernel versions: Android version Linux kernel version 1 2.6.25 1.5 2.6.27 1.6 2.6.29 2.2 2.6.32 2.3 2.6.35 3.0 2.6.36 4.0 3.0.1 4.1 3.0.31 4.2 3.4.0 4.2 3.4.39 4.4 3.8 5.0 3.16.1 6.0 3.18.1 7.0 4.4.1 The permission model As shown in the following screenshot, any Android application must be granted permissions to access sensitive functionality, such as the internet, dialer, and so on, by the user. This provides an opportunity for the user to know in advance which functions on the device is being accessed by the application. Simply put, it requires the user's permission to perform any kind of malicious activity (stealing data, compromising the system, and so on). This model helps the user to prevent attacks, but if the user is unaware and gives away a lot of permissions, it leaves them in trouble (remember, when it comes to installing malware on any device, the weakest link is always the user). Until Android 6.0, users needed to grant the permissions during install time. Users had to either accept all the permissions or not install the application. But, starting from Android 6.0, users grant permissions to apps while the app is running. This new permission system also gives the user more control over the app's functionality by allowing the user to grant selective permissions. For example, a user can deny a particular app access to his location but provide access to the internet. The user can revoke the permissions at any time by going to the app's Settings screen. Application sandbox In Linux systems, each user is assigned a unique user ID (UID), and users are segregated so that one user cannot access the data of another user. However, all applications under a particular user are run with the same privileges. Similarly, in Android, each application runs as a unique user. In other words, a UID is assigned to each application and is run as a separate process. This concept ensures an application sandbox at the kernel level. The kernel manages the security restrictions between the applications by making use of existing Linux concepts, such as UID and GID. If an application attempts to do something malicious, say to read the data of another application, this is not permitted as the application does not have user privileges. Hence, the operating system protects an application from accessing the data of another application. Secure inter-process communication Android offers secure inter-process communication through which one's activity in an application can send messages to another activity in the same application or a different application. To achieve this, Android provides inter-process communication (IPC) mechanisms: intents, services, content providers, and so on. Application signing It is mandatory that all of the installed applications are digitally signed. Developers can place their applications in Google's Play Store only after signing the applications. The private key with which the application is signed is held by the developer. Using the same key, a developer can provide updates to their application, share data between the applications, and so on. Security-Enhanced Linux Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a security feature that was introduced in Android 4.3 and fully enforced in Android 5.0. Until this addition, Android security was based on Discretionary Access Control (DAC), which means applications can ask for permissions, and users can grant or deny those permissions. Thus, malware can create havoc on phones by gaining those permissions. But, SE Android uses Mandatory Access Control (MAC), which ensures that applications work in isolated environments. Hence, even if a user installs a malware app, the malware cannot access the OS and corrupt the device. SELinux is used to enforce MAC over all the processes, including the ones running with root privileges. SELinux operates on the principle of default denial: anything that is not explicitly allowed is denied. SELinux can operate in one of the two global modes: permissive mode, in which permission denials are logged but not enforced, and enforcing mode, in which denials are both logged and enforced. Full Disk Encryption With Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google has mandated Full Disk Encryption (FDE) for most devices, provided that the hardware meets certain minimum standards. Encryption is the process of converting data into cipher text using a secret key. On Android devices, full disk encryption refers to the process of encrypting all user data using a secret key. This key is then encrypted by the lock screen PIN/pattern/password before being securely stored in a trusted location. Once a device is encrypted, all user-created data is automatically encrypted before writing it to disk, and all reads automatically decrypt data before returning it to the calling process. Full disk encryption in Android works only with an Embedded Multimedia Card (eMMC) and similar flash devices that present themselves to the kernel as block devices. Staring from Android 7.x, Google decided to shift the encryption feature from full-disk encryption to file-based encryption. In file-based encryption, different files are encrypted with different keys. By doing so, those files can be unlocked independently without requiring an entire partition to be decrypted at once. As a result of this, the system can now decrypt and use files needed to boot the system, and open notifications without having to wait until the user unlocks the phone. Trusted Execution Environment Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) is an isolated area (typically a separate microprocessor) intended to guarantee the security of data stored inside it, and also to execute code with integrity. The main processor on mobile devices is considered untrusted and cannot be used to store secret data (such as cryptographic keys). Hence, TEE is used specifically to perform such operations, and the software running on the main processor delegates any operations that require the use of secret data to the TEE processor. Thus we talked about the Linux Kernel layer, over which Android is built. We also talked about Android's security features and offerings and how Linux plays a role to secure Android OS. To learn more about methods for accessing the data stored on Android devices, read our book Practical Mobile Forensics - Third Edition. The kernel community attempting to make Linux more secure. Google open sources Filament – a physically based rendering engine for Android, Windows, Linux and macOS Google becomes a new platinum member of the Linux Foundation

A powerful backend solution is essential for building sophisticated mobile apps. In recent years, Firebase has emerged to prominence as a power-packed Backend-as-a-Solution (BaaS), thanks to its wide-ranging features and performance boosting elements. After being acquired in 2014 by Google, several of its features further got a performance boost. These features have made  Firebase quite a popular backend solution for app developers and other emerging IT sectors. Let us look at its 4 key benefits for cross-platform mobile app development. Unleashing the power of Google Analytics Google Analytics for Firebase is a completely free solution with unconstrained reporting on many aspects. The reporting feature allows you to evaluate client behavior, report on broken links, user interactions and all other aspects of user experience and user interface. The reporting helps developers make informed decisions while optimizing the UI and the app performance. The unmatched scale of reporting: Firebase analytics allows access to unlimited reports on as many as 500 different events. The developers can also create custom events for reporting as their need suits. Robust audience segmentation: The Firebase analytics also allows segmenting the app audience on different parameters and grounds. The integrated console allows segmenting the audience on the basis of device information, custom events, and user characteristics. Crash reporting to fix Bugs Firebase also helps to address performance issues of an app by fixing bugs right from its backend solution. It is also equipped with robust crash reporting feature. Its crash reporting helps to deliver intricate and detailed bug and crash reports to address all the coding errors in an app. The reporting feature is capable of grouping together the issues in different categories as per the characteristics of the problem. Here are some of the attributes of this reporting feature. Monitoring errors: It is capable of monitoring fatal errors for iOS apps and both fatal and non-fatal errors for Android apps. Generally, reports are initiated as per the impact caused by such errors on the user experience. Required data collection to fix errors: The reports also enlist all the details concerning the device in use, performance shortfalls and user scenarios concerning the erroneous events. According to the contributing factors and other similarities, the issues are grouped in different categories. Email alerts: It also allows sending email alerts as and when such issues or problems are detected. The configuration of error reporting: The error reporting can also be configured remotely to control who can access the reports and list of events that occurred before an event. It is free: Crash and bug reporting is free with Firebase. You don't need to pay a penny to access this feature. Synchronizing data with real-time database With Firebase you can sync the offline and online data through NoSQL database. This makes the application data available on both offline and online states of the app. This boosts collaboration on the application data in real time. Here are some of its benefits. Real-time: Unlike the so-called HTTP requests that work to update the data across interfaces, the Real-time Database of firebase syncs data with every change thus helping to reflect the change in real time across any device in use. Offline: As Firebase Real-time Database SDK helps save your data in local disk, you can always access the data offline. As and when connectivity is back, the changes are synced with the present state of the server. Access from multiple devices: The Firebase Real-time Database allows accessing application data from multiple devices and interfaces including mobile devices and web. Splitting and scaling your data: Thanks to Firebase Real-time Database, you can split your data across multiple databases within the same project and set rules for each database instances. Firebase is feature rich for futuristic app development In addition to the above, Firebase is fully empowered with a host of rich features required for building sophisticated and most feature-rich mobile apps. Let us have a look at some of the key features of Firebase that made it a reliable platform for cross-platform development. Hosting: The hosting feature of Firebase allows developers to update their contents in the Content Delivery Network (CDN) during production. Firebase offers full hosting support with a custom domain, Global CDN, and an automatically provided SSL Certificate. Authentication: Firebase backend service offers a powerful authentication feature. It comes equipped with simple SDKs and easy to use libraries to integrate authentication feature with any mobile app. Storage: Firebase storage feature is powered by Google Cloud Storage and allows users to easily download media files and visual contents. This feature is also helpful in making use of user-generated content. Cloud Messaging: With Cloud Messaging, a mobile app powered can easily send a message to users and indulge in real-time communication. Remote Configuration: This feature of Firebase allows developers to incorporate certain changes in the app remotely. Thanks to this, the changes are reflected in the existing version, and the user does not need to download the latest updated version. Test Lab: With Test lab, developers can easily test the app in all the devices listed in the Google data center. It can even do the testing without requiring any test code of the respective app. Notifications: This feature gives developers a console to manage and send user-focused custom notifications to the users. App Indexing: This feature allows developers to index the app in Google Search and achieve higher search ranks in app marketplaces like Play Store and App Store. Dynamic Links: Firebase also equips the app to create dynamic links or smart URLs to present the respective app across all digital platforms including social media, mobile app, web, email, and other channels. All the above-mentioned benefits and useful features that empower mobile app developers to create dynamic user experience helped Firebase achieve such unprecedented popularity among developers worldwide. No wonder, in a short time span it has become a very popular backend solution for so many successful cross-platform mobile apps. Some exemplary use cases of Firebases Here we have picked two use cases of Firebase, respectively for one relatively new and successful app and one leading app in its niche. Fabulous Fabulous is a unique app that trains users to dispose of bad habits and get used to good habits to ensure health and wellbeing. The app by customizing the onboarding process through Firebase managed to double the retention rate. The app could incorporate custom user experience for different groups of users as per their preference. Onefootball This leading mobile soccer app OneFootBall experienced more than 5% increase in user session time thanks to Firebase. The new backend solution powered by Firebase helped the game app engage the audience more efficiently than ever before. The custom contents created by this popular app can enjoy better traction with users thanks to higher engagement. Author Bio: Juned Ahmed works as an IT consultant at IndianAppDevelopers, a leading Mobile app development company which offers to hire app developers in India for mobile solutions. He has more than 10 years of experience in developing and implementing marketing strategies. How to integrate Firebase on Android/iOS applications natively. Build powerful progressive web apps with Firebase. How to integrate Firebase with NativeScript for cross-platform app development.

As mobile application development is becoming the new trend in the business world, the competition to enter the mobile market has intensified. Business leaders are hunting for every possible way to reach the market at the earliest and outshine the competition. Albeit, without compromising on the quality and quantity of the opportunities in the market. One such method prevalent in the market is the adoption of Agile methodology. Agile mobile app development methodology The Agile methodology is an incremental and iterative mobile application development approach, where the complete app development process cycle is divided into multiple sub-modules, considered as mini-projects. Every submodule is assigned to an individual team and subjected to the complete development cycle, right from designing to development, testing, and delivery. Image Source: AppInventiv Benefits of Agile Mobile App Development Approach The technology, due to this iterative nature, is highly recommended in the market. Here are 9 reasons to choose Agile for your mobile app development project Faster Development In the case of the Agile model, the complete mobile app project is divided into smaller modules which are treated like independent sub-projects. These sub-projects are handled by different teams independently, with little-to-no dependencies on each other. Besides, everyone has a clear idea of what their contribution will be and the associated resources and deadline, which accelerates the development process. Every developer puts their best efforts into completing their part in the mobile app development project, an outcome of which is a more streamlined app development process with faster delivery. Reduced Risks With the changing market needs and trends, it is quite risky to launch your own application. Many times, it happens that the market data you have taken into consideration while developing your app gets outdated by the time you launch your app. The outcome is poor ROI and a shady future in the market. Agile, in this situation, is a tool that allows you to take calculated risks and improve your project’s market scope. In other words, the methodology enables a mobile app development company to make changes to any particular sprint without disturbing the code of the previous sprints. Thus, making their application more suitable for the market. Better Quality Agile, unlike the traditional app development models, does not test the app at the end of the development phase. Rather, it fosters testing of every single module at the primitive level. This reduces the risk of encountering a bug at the time of quality testing of the complete project. It also helps mobile app developers to inspect the app elements at every stage of the development process and make adjustments as per the requirement, eventually helping in delivering a higher quality of services. Seamless Project Management By transforming the complete app development project into multiple individual modules, the Agile methodology provides you with the facility to manage your project easily. You can easily assign the tasks to different teams and reduce the dependencies and discussions at the inter-team level. You can also keep a record of the activities performed on each mini project and in this way, determine if something is missing or not working as per the proposed plan. Besides, you can check the productivity of every individual and put your efforts into making/hiring more efficient experts. Enhanced Customer Experience The Agile mobile app development approach puts a strong emphasis on people and collaboration, which renders the development team with an opportunity to work closely with their clients and understand their vision. Besides, the projects are delivered to the clients in the form of multiple sprints, which brings transparency to the process. It also enables the team to determine if both parties are on the same page and if not, allow them to make the required changes before proceeding further. This lessens the chances of launching app that does not fulfill to the idea behind, and therefore, ensures enhanced customer experience. Lower Development Cost Since every step is well planned, executed, and delivered, you can easily calculate the cost of making an app and thus, justify your app budget. Besides, if at any stage of development, you feel the need to raise the app budget, you can easily do it with Agile methodology. In this way, you can avoid leaving the project incomplete due to lack of required resources and funds. Customization The agile mobile app development approach also provides developers with an opportunity to customize their development process. There’ are no rules to create an app in a particular way. Experts can look for different ways to develop and launch the mobile app, and integrate the cutting-edge technologies and tools into the process. In a nutshell, the Agile process enables developers to customize the development timeline as per their choice and deliver a user-centric solution. Higher ROI The Agile methodology lets the mobile app development companies enter the market with the most basic app (MVP) and update the app with each iteration. This makes it easier for the app owners to test their idea, gather required data and insights, build a brand presence, and thus, deliver the best features as per the customer needs and market trends. This aids the app owners and associated mobile app development company to take the right decision for gaining better ROI in the market. Earlier Market Reach By dividing the complete app project into submodules, the Agile mobile app development approach encourages the team to deliver every module with the stipulated deadline. Lagging behind the deadlines is not practically possible. The outcome of this is that the complete app project is designed and delivered on-time or even earlier to it, which means earlier market reach. The Agile methodology can do wonders for mobile app development. However, it is required that everyone is well aware of the end goal and contributes to this approach wisely. Only then can you enjoy all of the aforementioned benefits. With this, are you ready to go Agile? Are you ready to develop a mobile app with an Agile mobility strategy?. Author Bio Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Technology and 2 years of work experience in a mobile app development company, Bhupinder is focused on making technology digestible to all. Being someone who stays updated with the latest tech trends, she’s always armed to write and spread the knowledge. When not found writing, you will find her answering on Quora while sipping coffee.

Running Android apps on Chrome is a complicated task, especially when you are not using a Chromebook. However, it should be noted that Chrome has an in-built tool (now) that allows users to test Android-based application in the browser, launched by Google in 2015, known as App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) Welder. What is ARC Welder? The ARC Welder tool allows Android applications to run on Google Chrome for Windows, OS X, Linux systems. ARC Welder is basically for app developers who want to test run their Android applications within Chrome OS and confront any runtime errors or bugs. The tool was launched as an experimental concept for developers previously but later was available for download for everyone. Main functions: ARC Welder offers an easy and streamlined method for application testing. At the first step, the user will be required to add the bundle into the existing application menu. Users are provided with the freedom to write to any file or a folder which can be opened via ARC software assistance. Any beginner developer or a user can choose to leave the settings page as they (settings) will be set to default if skipped or left unsaved. Here’s how to run ARC Welder tool for running android application: Download or upgrade to the latest version of Google Chrome browser. Download and run the ARC Welder application from the Google Chrome Store. Add a third-party APK file host. After downloading the APK app file in your laptop/PC, click Open. Select the mode “Phone” and ‘Tablet”--either of which you wish you run the application on. Lastly, click on the "Launch App" button. Points to remember for running ARC Welder on Chrome: ARC Welder tool only works with APK files, which means that in order to get your Android Applications successfully run on your laptop, you will be required to download APK files of the specific application you wish to install on your desktop. You can find APK files from the below mentioned APK databases: APKMirror AndroidAPKsFree AndroidCrew APKPure Points to remember before installing ARC Welder: Only one specific application can be loaded at one single time. On the basis of your application, you will be required to select the portrait/landscape mode manually. Tablet and Phone mode specifications are necessary as they have different outcomes. ARC Welder is based on Android 4.4. This means that users are required to test applications that support Android 4.4 or above. Note: Points 1 and 2 can be considered as limitations of ARC Welder. Pros: Cross-platform as it works on Windows, Linux, Mac and Chrome OS. Developed by Google which means the software will evolve quickly considering the upgrade pace of Android (also developed by Google). Allows application testing in Google Chrome web browser. Cons: Not all Google Play Services are supported by ARC Welder. ARC Welder only supports “ARM” APK format. Keyboard input is spotty. Takes 2-3 minutes to install as compared to other testing applications like BlueStacks (one-click install). No accelerometer simulation. Users are required to choose the “orientation” mode before getting into the detailed interface of ARC Welder. There are competitors of ARC Welder like BlueStacks which is often preferred by a majority of developers due to its one-click install feature. Although ARC Welder gives a much better performance, it still ranks at 7th (BlueStacks stands at 6th). Apart from shortcomings, ARC Welder continues to evolve and secure its faithful following of beginners to expert developers. In the next section, we’ll have a look at the few alternatives to ARC Welder. Few Alternatives: Genymotion - It is an easy to use android emulator for your computer. It works as a virtual machine and enables you to run mobile apps and games on your desktop and laptop efficiently. Andy - It is an operating system that works as an android emulator for your computer. It allows you to open up mobile apps and play mobile games in a version of the Android operating system on your Mac or Windows desktop. BlueStacks - It is a website that has been built to format mobile apps and make them compatible to the desktop computers. It also helps to open ip mobile gaming apps on computers and laptops. MEmu - It is the fastest android emulator that allows you to play mobile games on PC for free. It is known for its performance, and user experience. It supports most of the popular mobile apps and games, and various system configurations. Koplayer - It is a free, one of the best android emulator for PC that supports video recording, multiple accounts, and keyboard. Built on x86 architecture, it is more stable and faster than Bluestacks. Not to mention, it is very interesting to load android apps on chrome browser on your computer and laptop, no matter which operating system you are using. It could be very useful to run android apps on chrome browser when Google play store and Apple app store are prone to exploitation. Although right now we can run a few apps using ARC Welder, one at a time, surely the developers will add more functionality and take this to the next level. So, are you ready to use mobile apps play mobile games on your PC using ARC Welder? If you have any questions, leave in the comment box, we’ll respond back. Author Bio Hilary is a writer, content manager at Androidcrew.com. She loves to share the knowledge and insights she gained along the way with others.    

Developer advocates are people with a strong technical background, whose job is to help developers be successful with a platform or technology. They act as a bridge between the engineering team and the developer community. A developer advocate does not only fill in the gap between developers and the platform but also looks after the development of developers in terms of traction and progress on their projects. Developer advocacy, is broadly referred to as "developer relations". Those who practice developer advocacy have fallen into in this profession in one way or another. As the processes and theories in the world of programming have evolved over several years, so has the idea of developer advocacy. This is the result of developer advocates who work in the wild using their own initiatives. This article is an excerpt from the book Developer, Advocate! by Geertjan Wielenga. This book serves as a rallying cry to inspire and motivate tech enthusiasts and burgeoning developer advocates to take their first steps within the tech community. The question then arises, how does one become a developer advocate? Here are some experiences shared by some well-known developer advocates on how they started the journey that landed them to this role. Is developer advocacy taught in universities? Bruno Borges, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft says, for most developer advocates or developer relations personnel, it was something that just happened. Developer advocacy is not a discipline that is taught in universities; there's no training specifically for this. Most often, somebody will come to realize that what they already do is developer relations. This is a discipline that is a conjunction of several other roles: software engineering, product management, and marketing. I started as a software engineer and then I became a product manager. As a product manager, I was engaged with marketing divisions and sales divisions directly on a weekly basis. Maybe in some companies, sales, marketing, and product management are pillars that are not needed. I think it might vary. But in my opinion, those pillars are essential for doing a proper developer relations job. Trying to aim for those pillars is a great foundation. Just as in computer science when we go to college for four years, sometimes we don't use some of that background, but it gives us a good foundation. From outsourcing companies that just built business software for companies, I then went to vendor companies. That's where I landed as a person helping users to take full advantage of the software that they needed to build their own solutions. That process is, ideally, what I see happening to others. The journey of a regular tech enthusiast to a developer advocate Ivar Grimstad, a developer advocate at Eclipse foundation, speaks about his journey from being a regular tech enthusiast attending conferences to being there speaking at conferences as an advocate for his company. Ivar Grimstad says, I have attended many different conferences in my professional life and I always really enjoyed going to them. After some years of regularly attending conferences, I came to the point of thinking, "That guy isn't saying anything that I couldn't say. Why am I not up there?" I just wanted to try speaking, so I started submitting abstracts. I already gave talks at meetups locally, but I began feeling comfortable enough to approach conferences. I continued submitting abstracts until I got accepted. As it turned out, while I was becoming interested in speaking, my company was struggling to raise its profile. Nobody, even in Sweden, knew what we did. So, my company was super happy for any publicity it could get. I could provide it with that by just going out and talking about tech. It didn't have to be related to anything we did; I just had to be there with the company name on the slides. That was good enough in the eyes of my company. After a while, about 50% of my time became dedicated to activities such as speaking at conferences and contributing to open source projects. Tables turned from being an engineer to becoming a developer advocate Mark Heckler, a Spring developer and advocate at Pivotal, narrates his experience about how tables turned for him from University to Pivotal Principal Technologist & Developer Advocate. He says, initially, I was doing full-time engineering work and then presenting on the side. I was occasionally taking a few days here and there to travel to present at events and conferences. I think many people realized that I had this public-facing level of activities that I was doing. I was out there enough that they felt I was either doing this full-time or maybe should be. A good friend of mine reached out and said, "I know you're doing this anyway, so how would you like to make this your official role?" That sounded pretty great, so I interviewed, and I was offered a full-time gig doing, essentially, what I was already doing in my spare time. A hobby turned out to be a profession Matt Raible, a developer advocate at Okta has worked as an independent consultant for 20 years. He did advocacy as a side hobby. He talks about his experience as a consultant and walks through the progress and development. I started a blog in 2002 and wrote about Java a lot. This was before Stack Overflow, so I used Struts and Java EE. I posted my questions, which you would now post on Stack Overflow, on that blog with stack traces, and people would find them and help. It was a collaborative community. I've always done the speaking at conferences on the side. I started working for Stormpath two years ago, as a contractor part-time, and I was working at Computer Associates at the same time. I was doing Java in the morning at Stormpath and I was doing JavaScript in the afternoon at Computer Associates. I really liked the people I was working with at Stormpath and they tried to hire me full-time. I told them to make me an offer that I couldn't refuse, and they said, "We don't know what that is!" I wanted to be able to blog and speak at conferences, so I spent a month coming up with my dream job. Stormpath wanted me to be its Java lead. The problem was that I like Java, but it's not my favorite thing. I tend to do more UI work. The opportunity went away for a month and then I said, "There's a way to make this work! Can I do Java and JavaScript?" Stormpath agreed that instead of being more of a technical leader and owning the Java SDK, I could be one of its advocates. There were a few other people on board in the advocacy team. Six months later, Stormpath got bought out by Okta. As an independent consultant, I was used to switching jobs every six months, but I didn't expect that to happen once I went full-time. That's how I ended up at Okta! Developer advocacy can be done by calculating the highs and lows of the tech world Scott Davis, a Principal Engineer at Thoughtworks, was also a classroom instructor, teaching software classes to business professionals before becoming a developer advocate. As per him, tech really is a world of strengths and weaknesses. Advocacy, I think, is where you honestly say, "If we balance out the pluses and the minuses, I'm going to send you down the path where there are more strengths than weaknesses. But I also want to make sure that you are aware of the sharp, pointy edges that might nick you along the way." I spent eight years in the classroom as a software instructor and that has really informed my entire career. It's one thing to sit down and kind of understand how something works when you're cowboy coding on your own. It's another thing altogether when you're standing up in front of an audience of tens, or hundreds, or thousands of people. Discover how developer advocates are putting developer interests at the heart of the software industry in companies including Microsoft and Google with Developer, Advocate! by Geertjan Wielenga. This book is a collection of in-depth conversations with leading developer advocates that reveal the world of developer relations today. 6 reasons why employers should pay for their developers’ training and learning resources “Developers need to say no” – Elliot Alderson on the FaceApp controversy in a BONUS podcast episode [Podcast] GitHub has blocked an Iranian software developer’s account How do AWS developers manage Web apps? Are you looking at transitioning from being a developer to manager? Here are some leadership roles to consider

The augmented reality market is developing rapidly. Today, it has a total market value of almost $15 billion; according to Statista,  and this figure could rise to $210 billion by 2022. Augmented reality is having a huge impact on the games industry, but it’s being used by organizations in fields as diverse as publishing and retail.. For example, Layar is an app that turns static objects into live objects, while IKEA’s Catalog app lets you imagine how different types of furniture might fit into your room. But it’s not just about commerce: some apps have a distinctly educational bent, like Field Trip. Field Trip uses augmented reality to help users learn about the history that immediately surrounds them. The best augmented reality apps are always deceptively simple. But to build a really effective augmented reality application you need a diverse range of skills, that span both the domains of software and real-world physics. Let’s take a closer look at location-based augmented reality apps, including what they’re used for and how you can begin building them. How does location-based AR app work? Location-based augmented reality apps are sometimes called geo-based AR apps. Whatever you call them, one thing is important: they collate GPS mobile data and the digital compass to detect the location and position of the device. The application works like this: The AR app arranges queries to be dispatched to the sensor. Once the data has been acquired, the app can determine where it should add virtual information (such as images) should be added to the real world. Location-based augmented reality apps can be used both inside or outside. When inside and it isn’t possible to connect to GPS, the application will use beacons for location data. The best examples of existing location-based augmented reality apps While reading about location-based augmented reality apps can give you a good idea of how they work, to be really inspired, you need to try some out for yourself. Here’s a list of some of the best location-based augmented reality apps out there. Yelp Monocle Yelp Monocle helps you navigate an unknown city. Using GPS, it provides exactly the sort of information you’d expect from Yelp, but in a format that’s fully integrated with your surroundings. So, you can see restaurant reviews, shop opening hours as you move around your environment. Ingress Ingress is an augmented reality gaming app that immerses you in a (semi) virtual world. Your main mission is to find portals that the game ‘creates’ in your immediate environment and open them. Essentially, the game is a great way to explore the world around you and places a new augmented layer on a place that might otherwise be familiar. Vortex Planetarium Vortex Planetarium is an app for aspiring astronomers or anybody else with a passing interest in astronomy. The app detects the user’s location and then provides them with celestial data to better understand the night sky. Steps to create location-based AR app So, if you like the idea of a location-based augmented reality app, you’ll probably want to get started. As we’ve seen, these apps can be incredibly complex, but if you break the development process down, it should become much easier. 1. Determine what resources you need Depending on the complexity of your app, you need to determine what resources are needed - that could be anything from data to other frameworks and services will be required. For example, if you plan to create a game with 3D objects, you’ll need to use Unity to build in that level of functionality and realism. 2. Choose the right augmented reality tool There are a huge number of available augmented reality software development kits out there. However, rather than wade through every single one, here are some of the best to get started with. R SDKs, but we will list the most popular ones that can give you the widest range of possible features. AR Kit by Apple AR kit from Apple features just about everything you’d need to develop an augmented reality application, For example, it has a technology that allows combines both computer vision and camera data to track the user’s environment. AR Kit also is able to adjust the light level in the virtual model, to respond to the level of light in the real world. ARKit 2 recently brought users a number of cool new features. For example, it allows you to build interactivity into your application, and also allows you to build ‘memory’ into your app so it can ‘remember’ the location of augmented reality objects.ARCore by Google In Google’s ARCore you’ll find a mapping tool which is particularly useful for developing of location-based AR apps. ARCore can also track motion and detect vertical and horizontal surfaces. In the latest version of ARCore users can take two gadgets and work with one AR object from different viewing angles. 3. Geolocation data should be added Not all SDKs provide mapping feature. If it doesn’t, it’s essential to make sure you add in geolocation data. Without it, the app wouldn’t work! As we’ve already seen, GPS technology is typically used. It’s convenient and it can detect a user's location anywhere. It can, however, consume a lot of energy. Location services on iOS and Android will help to activate geolocation on the device. 3 augmented reality pitfalls to avoid Developing something as complex as a location-based augmented reality app is bound to lead to some challenges. So be prepared - watch for some of these pitfalls.. Ensure you have proper functionality. When users move with their camera and look for AR objects, these objects should remain static, regardless of the user’s movements. To do this, use SLAM - Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This is a technique that allows software systems - like robots - ‘understand’ where they are situated in relation to their surroundings. Accuracy. A crucial factor for any AR app is accuracy. When developing your app, it’s essential to consider the user’s position to ensure that the app sends queries to sensors correctly. If it doesn’t the whole experience could seem plain weird for the user. Similarly, the distance between the device and the real world must be calculated correctly - again, if it isn’t your application simply will not work. Get started - build an awesome augmented reality app! Clearly, building a location-based augmented reality app isn’t easy. It requires skill and a commitment to keep going in the face of challenges. You certainly need a team of great developers around you if you’re going to deliver something that makes an impact. But, really, that’s what makes software development exciting, right? Author Bio Vitaly Kuprenko is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It's a web and mobile app development company in Ukraine. He enjoys telling about tech innovations and digital ways to boost businesses. Magic Leap unveils Mica, a human-like AI in augmented reality. Magic Leap teams with Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium Studios to enhance Augmented Reality “As Artists we should be constantly evolving our technical skills and thought processes to push the boundaries on what’s achievable,” Marco Matic Ryan, Augmented Reality Artist

Hybrid mobile apps have been around for quite some time now, but advances in mobile development software and changes in user behavior have allowed it to grow. Today, users expect hybrid apps, even if they wouldn’t know what a ‘hybrid app’ actually is. What is a Hybrid mobile app? A Hybrid app is essentially a web application that acts like a native app. Or a native app that acts like a web application. That means it can do everything HTML5 does while also incorporating native app features, like access to a phone’s camera. Hybrid mobile apps consist of two parts. The first is the back-end code built using languages such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The second is a native shell that loads the code using Webview. Advantages of hybrid mobile apps Hybrid apps are much easier to build than native apps. This is because they are built using HTML, CSS, and Javascript - software that typically runs in the browser. They also have a faster development cycle than native apps because you only have a JavaScript codebase. It is, however, important to note that hybrid mobile apps require third-party tools such as Apache Cordova to ease communication between the web view and the native platform. Noteworthy Hybrid apps include MarketWatch, Untappd, Sworkit etc. Hybrid mobile apps can run on both Android and iOS devices (the two most prominent OS). This is great for developers as it means less work for them - code can be reused for progressive web applications and desktop applications with minor tweaking. Disadvantages of hybrid mobile apps Although they’re extremely versatile, hybrid apps have certain disadvantages. They’re often a little more expensive than standard web apps because you have to work with the native wrapper. It’s also sometimes a disadvantage to be dependent on a third-party platform. Compared to native apps, hybrid apps aren’t quite as interactive and often a bit slower. Of course, the app is dependent on resources from the web. Hybrid mobile apps also generally have a standard template. Any customization you want to do in your application will take you away from the hybrid model. If this is the case, you may as well go native. Hybrid mobile app frameworks There are a good range of hybrid mobile application frameworks out there for mobile developers at the moment. Let’s take a look at some of the best. React Native Facebook’s React Native is a mobile framework for implementing a single code multiple times. It compiles to native mobile app components to build native mobile applications (iOS, Android, and Windows) in JavaScript. React Native’s library includes Flexbox CSS styling, inline styling, debugging, and supports deploying to either the App Store or Google Play. Ionic Ionic Framework is an open-source SDK for hybrid mobile app development, licensed under MIT. It is built on top of Angular.js and Apache Cordova.  Ionic provides tools and services for developing hybrid mobile apps using Web technologies like CSS, HTML5, and Sass. Apps build using Ionic can be distributed through native app stores to be installed on devices by using Cordova. Xamarin Microsoft’s Xamarin Hybrid development platform allows developers to code in C# many platforms in C#. Developers can use Xamarin tools to write native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with a C#-shared codebase, and share code across multiple platforms. PhoneGap Adobe PhoneGap framework is an open source distribution of Apache Cordova framework. With PhoneGap, hybrid applications are built with HTML5 and CSS3 (for rendering), and JavaScript (for logic) to be used across multiple platforms. Hybrid mobile apps are great for users Hybrid mobile apps are particularly effective when you want to build and deploy an app more efficiently. They are also useful for building prototype applications. However, the key thing to remember about hybrid mobile apps is that many users today expect the type of experience they deliver. The old distinction between browser and native experiences has almost disappeared. A well-written hybrid app does not behave or look any different than its native equivalent and that, really, is what users want. Also, check out React Native Cookbook React and React Native Learning Ionic - Second Edition Ionic 2 Cookbook - Second Edition Mastering Xamarin UI Development

The primary target for businesses while working on mobile apps is the Android platform, thanks to the massive market share the mobile operating system holds. It’s popularity can be attributed to the fact that it is open source and is regular updated with new enhancements and features. Android devices generally tend to differ based on the mobile hardware features even when powered by the same version of the Android OS. This is why it is essential that when developing apps for Android, developers create mobile apps capable of targeting a diverse range of mobile devices running on different versions of Android OS. During the various stages of planning, developing and testing, developers need to focus comprehensively on the apps functionality, accessibility, usability, performance, and security so that users can be engaged despite their choice of device. Also, they also need to look for ways to make the apps deliver a more personalized user experience across the various devices an operating system. Furthermore, developers need to understand and find solutions to the common challenges involved in android app development. Common Challenges Android App Developers Face 1. Hardware Features The Android OS is unlike any other mobile operating system. For one thing, it is an open source system. Alphabet gives manufacturers the leeway to customize the operating system to their specific needs. Also, there are no regulations on the devices being released by the different manufacturers. As a result, you can find various Android devices with different hardware features running on the same Android version. Two smartphones running on Android latest ver, for example, may have different screen resolutions, camera, screen size, and other hardware structures. During android app development, developers need to account for all of this to ensure the application delivers a personalized experience to each user. 2. Lack of Uniform User Interface Design Rules Since Google is yet to release any standard UI (user interface) design rules or process for mobile app developers, most developers don’t follow any standard UI development rules or procedure. Because developers are creating custom UI interfaces in their preferred way, a lot of apps tend to function or look different across different devices. This diversity and incompatibility of the UI usually affects the user experience that the Android app directly delivers. Smart developers prefer to go for a responsive layout that’ll keep the UI consistent across different devices. Moreover, developers need to test the UI of the app extensively by combining emulators and real mobile devices. Designing a UI that makes the app deliver the same user experience across varying Android devices is one of the more daunting challenges developers face. 3. API Incompatibility A lot of developers make use of third-party APIs to enhance the functionality and interoperability of a mobile device. Unfortunately, not all third-party APIs available for Android app development are of high quality.. Some APIs were created for a particular Android version and will not work on devices running on a different version of the operating system. Developers usually have to come up with ways to make a single API work on all Android versions, a task they often find to be very challenging. 4. Security Flaws As previously mentioned, Android is an open source software, and because of that, manufacturers find it easy to customize Android to their desired specifications. However, this openness and the massive market size makes Android a frequent target for security attacks. There have been several instances where the security of millions of Android mobile devices have been affected by security flaws and bugs like mRST, Stagefright, FakeID, ‘Certifi-gate,’ TowelRoot and Installer Hijacking. Developers need to include robust security features in their applications and utilize the latest encryption mechanisms to keep user information secure and out of the hands of hackers. 5. Search Engine Visibility The latest data from Statista shows that Google Play Store contains a higher number of mobile apps. Additionally, a large number of Android users prefer free apps than paid apps which is why developers need to promote their mobile applications to increase their download numbers and employ application monetization options. The best way to promote the app to reach their target audience is to use comprehensive digital marketing strategies. Most developers make use of digital marketing professionals to promote their apps aggressively. 6. Patent Issues Google doesn’t implement any guidelines for the evaluation of the quality of new apps that are getting submitted to the Play Store. This lack of a quality assessment guideline causes a lot of patent-related issues for developers. Some developers, to avoid patent issues, have to modify and redesign their apps in the future. As per my personal experience, I have tried to cover general challenges faced by Android app developers. I’m sure keeping wary of these challenges would help developers to build successful apps in the most hassle free way. Author Bio Harnil Oza is the CEO of Hyperlink InfoSystem, one of the leading app development companies in New York, USA and India who deliver mobile solutions mainly on Android and iOS platform. He regularly contributes his knowledge on leading blogging sites. LEGO launches BrickHeadz Builder AR, a new and free Android app to bring bricks and toys to life How Android app developers can convert iPhone apps How to Secure and Deploy an Android App

The essence of Augmented Reality is that your device recognizes objects in the real world and renders the computer graphics registered to the same 3D space, providing the illusion that the virtual objects are in the same physical space with you. Since augmented reality was first invented decades ago, the types of targets the software can recognize has progressed from very simple markers for images and natural feature tracking to full spatial map meshes. There are many AR development toolkits available; some of them are more capable than others of supporting a range of targets. The following is a survey of various Augmented Reality target types. We will go into more detail in later chapters, as we use different targets in different projects. Marker The most basic target is a simple marker with a wide border. The advantage of marker targets is they're readily recognized by the software with very little processing overhead and minimize the risk of the app not working, for example, due to inconsistent ambient lighting or other environmental conditions. The following is the Hiro marker used in example projects in ARToolkit: Coded Markers Taking simple markers to the next level, areas within the border can be reserved for 2D barcode patterns. This way, a single family of markers can be reused to pop up many different virtual objects by changing the encoded pattern. For example, a children's book may have an AR pop up on each page, using the same marker shape, but the bar code directs the app to show only the objects relevant to that page in the book. The following is a set of very simple coded markers from ARToolkit: Vuforia includes a powerful marker system called VuMark that makes it very easy to create branded markers, as illustrated in the following image. As you can see, while the marker styles vary for specific marketing purposes, they share common characteristics, including a reserved area within an outer border for the 2D code: Images The ability to recognize and track arbitrary images is a tremendous boost to AR applications as it avoids the requirement of creating and distributing custom markers paired with specific apps. Image tracking falls into the category of natural feature tracking (NFT). There are characteristics that make a good target image, including having a well-defined border (preferably eight percent of the image width), irregular asymmetrical patterns, and good contrast. When an image is incorporated in your AR app, it's first analyzed and a feature map (2D node mesh) is stored and used to match real-world image captures, say, in frames of video from your phone. Multi-targets It is worth noting that apps may be set up to see not just one marker in view but multiple markers. With multitargets, you can have virtual objects pop up for each marker in the scene simultaneously. Similarly, markers can be printed and folded or pasted on geometric objects, such as product labels or toys. The following is an example cereal box target: Text recognition If a marker can include a 2D bar code, then why not just read text? Some AR SDKs allow you to configure your app (train) to read text in specified fonts. Vuforia goes further with a word list library and the ability to add your own words. Simple shapes Your AR app can be configured to recognize basic shapes such as a cuboid or cylinder with specific relative dimensions. Its not just the shape but its measurements that may distinguish one target from another: Rubik's Cube versus a shoe box, for example. A cuboid may have width, height, and length. A cylinder may have a length and different top and bottom diameters (for example, a cone). In Vuforia's implementation of basic shapes, the texture patterns on the shaped object are not considered, just anything with a similar shape will match. But when you point your app to a real-world object with that shape, it should have enough textured surface for good edge detection; a solid white cube would not be easily recognized. Object recognition The ability to recognize and track complex 3D objects is similar but goes beyond 2D image recognition. While planar images are appropriate for flat surfaces, books or simple product packaging, you may need object recognition for toys or consumer products without their packaging. Vuforia, for example, offers Vuforia Object Scanner to create object data files that can be used in your app for targets. The following is an example of a toy car being scanned by Vuforia Object Scanner: Spatial maps Earlier, we introduced spatial maps and dynamic spatial location via SLAM. SDKs that support spatial maps may implement their own solutions and/or expose access to a device's own support. For example, the HoloLens SDK Unity package supports its native spatial maps, of course. Vuforia's spatial maps (called Smart Terrain) does not use depth sensing like HoloLens; rather, it uses visible light camera to construct the environment mesh using photogrammetry. Apple ARKit and Google ARCore also map your environment using the camera video fused with other sensor data. Geolocation A bit of an outlier, but worth mentioning, AR apps can also use just the device's GPS sensor to identify its location in the environment and use that information to annotate what is in view. I use the word annotate because GPS tracking is not as accurate as any of the techniques we have mentioned, so it wouldn't work for close-up views of objects. But it can work just fine, say, standing atop a mountain and holding your phone up to see the names of other peaks within the view or walking down a street to look up Yelp! reviews of restaurants within range. You can even use it for locating and capturing Pokémon. [box type="note" align="" class="" width=""]You read an excerpt from the book, Augmented Reality for Developers, by Jonathan Linowes, and Krystian Babilinski. To learn how to use these targets and to build a variety of AR apps, check the book now![/box]

Bill Gates is quoted as saying that we tend to overestimate the pace of change over a period of 2 years, but underestimate change over a decade. It’s an astute observation: much of what will matter in 2019 actually looks a lot like what we said will be important in development this year. But if you look back 10 years, the change in the types of applications and websites we build - as well as how we build them - is astonishing. The web as we understood it in 2008 is almost unrecognisable. Today, we are in the midst of the app and API economy. Notions of surfing the web sound almost as archaic as a dial up tone. Similarly, the JavaScript framework boom now feels old hat - building for browsers just sounds weird... So, as we move into 2019, progressive web apps, artificial intelligence, and native app development remain at the top of development agenda. But this doesn’t mean these changes are to be ignored as empty hype. If anything, as adoption increases and new tools emerge, we will begin to see more radical shifts in ways of working. The cutting edge will need to sharpen itself elsewhere. What will it mean to be a web developer in 2019? But these changes are enforcing wider changes in the industry. Arguably, it’s transforming what it means to be a web developer. As applications become increasingly lightweight (thanks to libraries and frameworks like React and Vue), and data becomes more intensive, thanks to the range of services upon which applications and websites depend, developers need to expand across the stack. You can see this in some of the latest Packt titles - in Modern JavaScript Web Development Cookbook, for example, you’ll learn microservices and native app development - topics that have typically fallen outside of the strict remit of web development. The simplification of many aspects of development has, ironically, forced developers to look more closely at how these aspects fit together. As you move further into layers of abstraction, the way things interact and work alongside each other become vital. For the most part, it’s no longer a case of writing the requisite code to make something run on the specific part of the application you’re working on, it’s rather about understanding how the various pieces - from the backend to the front end - fit together. This means, in 2019, you need to dive deeper and get to know your software systems inside out. Get comfortable with the backend. Dive into cloud. Start playing with microservices. Rethink and revisit languages you thought you knew. Get to know your infrastructure: tackling the challenges of API development It might sound strange, but as the stack shrinks and the responsibilities of developers - web and otherwise - shift, understanding the architectural components within the software their building is essential. You could blame some of this on DevOps - essentially, it has made developers responsible for how their code runs once it hits production. Because of this important change, the requisite skills and toolchain for the modern developer is also expanding. There are a range of routes into software architecture, but exploring API design is a good place to begin. Hands on RESTful API Design offers a practical way into the topic. While REST is the standard for API design, the diverse range of tools and approaches is making managing the client a potentially complex but interesting area. GraphQL, a query language developed by Facebook is said to have killed off REST (although we wouldn’t be so hasty), while Redux and Relay, two libraries for managing data in React applications, have seen a lot of interest over the last 12 months as two key tools for working with APIs. Want to get started with GraphQL? Try Beginning GraphQL. Learn Redux with Learning Redux.       Microservices: take responsibility for your infrastructure The reason that we’re seeing so many tools offering ways of managing APIs is that microservices are becoming the dominant architectural mode. This requires developer attention too. That’s not to say that you need to implement microservices now (in fact, there are probably many reasons not to), but if you want to be building software in 5 years time, getting to grips with the principles behind microservices and the tools that can help you use them. Perhaps one of the central technologies driving microservices are containers. You could run microservices in a virtual machine, but because they’re harder to scale than containers, you probably wouldn’t be seeing the benefits you’d be expecting from a microservices architecture. This means getting to grips with core container technologies is vital. Docker is the obvious place to start. There are varying degrees to which developers need to understand it, but even if you don’t think you’ll be using it immediately it does give you a nice real-world foundation in containers if you don’t already have one. Watch and learn how to put Docker to work with the Hands on Docker for Microservices video.  But beyond Docker, Kubernetes is the go to tool that allows you to scale and orchestrate containers. This gives you control over how you scale application services in a way that you probably couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. Get a grounding in Kubernetes with Getting Started with Kubernetes - Third Edition, or follow a 7 day learning plan with Kubernetes in 7 Days. If you want to learn how Docker and Kubernetes come together as part of a fully integrated approach to development, check out Hands on Microservices with Node.js. It's time for developers to embrace cloud It should come as no surprise that, if the general trend is towards full stack, where everything is everyone’s problem, that developers simply can’t afford to ignore cloud. And why would you want to - the levels of abstraction it offers, and the various services and integrations that come with the leading cloud services can make many elements of the development process much easier. Issues surrounding scale, hardware, setup and maintenance almost disappear when you use cloud. That’s not to say that cloud platforms don’t bring their own set of challenges, but they do allow you to focus on more interesting problems. But more importantly, they open up new opportunities. Serverless becomes a possibility - allowing you to scale incredibly quickly by running everything on your cloud provider, but there are other advantages too. Want to get started with serverless? Check out some of these titles… JavaScript Cloud Native Development Cookbook Hands-on Serverless Architecture with AWS Lambda [Video] Serverless Computing with Azure [Video] For example, when you use cloud you can bring advanced features like artificial intelligence into your applications. AWS has a whole suite of machine learning tools - AWS Lex can help you build conversational interfaces, while AWS Polly turns text into speech. Similarly, Azure Cognitive Services has a diverse range of features for vision, speech, language, and search. What cloud brings you, as a developer, is a way of increasing the complexity of applications and processes, while maintaining agility. Adding in features and optimizations previously might have felt sluggish - maybe even impossible. But by leveraging AWS and Azure (among others), you can do much more than you previously realised. Back to basics: New languages, and fresh approaches With all of this ostensible complexity in contemporary software development, you’d be forgiven for thinking that languages simply don’t matter. That’s obviously nonsense. There’s an argument that gaining a deeper understanding of how languages work, what they offer, and where they may be weak, can make you a much more accomplished developer. Be prepared is sage advice for a world where everything is unpredictable - both in the real world and inside our software systems too. So, you have two options - and both are smart. Either go back to a language you know and explore a new paradigm or learn a new language from scratch. Learn a new language: Kotlin Quick Start Guide Hands-On Go Programming Mastering Go Learning TypeScript 2.x - Second Edition     Explore a new programming paradigm: Functional Programming in Go [Video] Mastering Functional Programming Hands-On Functional Programming in RUST Hands-On Object-Oriented Programming with Kotlin     2019: the same, but different, basically... It's not what you should be saying if you work for a tech publisher, but I'll be honest: software development in 2019 will look a lot like it has in 2018.  But that doesn't mean you have time to be complacent. In just a matter of years, much of what feels new or ‘emerging’ today will be the norm. You don’t have to look hard to see the set of skills many full stack developer job postings are asking for - the demands are so diverse that adaptability is clearly immensely valuable both for your immediate projects and future career prospects. So, as 2019 begins, commit to developing yourself sharpening your skill set.