cross-platform – eli4d.com

Check out the State of JavaScript Report for 2018

The yearly “State of JavaScript” report has come out. It’s a survey of over twenty thousand developers and this year’s survey is beautiful in terms of visualization and succinctness.

The results of this year’s survey show through amazing periodic table type of charts with conclusions through quadrant charts. Conclusion pages are the best way to quickly get through the survey though it’s certainly worthwhile to savor it by going through all of it.

If you have limited time then check out the wonderful summaries:

JavaScript Flavors: https://2018.stateofjs.com/javascript-flavors/conclusion/
Front-end Frameworks: https://2018.stateofjs.com/front-end-frameworks/conclusion/
- Svelte is an interesting one: https://svelte.technology/
- Vue.js is definitely worthwhile if you’re not in React land (though there’s nothing wrong with React)
Data layer: https://2018.stateofjs.com/data-layer/conclusion/
Back-end Frameworks: https://2018.stateofjs.com/back-end-frameworks/conclusion/
Testing: https://2018.stateofjs.com/testing/conclusion/
Mobile and Desktop: https://2018.stateofjs.com/mobile-and-desktop/conclusion/
Other Tools (Python as a language seems to be the winner here): https://2018.stateofjs.com/other-tools/
The Opinion page is both interesting and funny: https://2018.stateofjs.com/opinions/
A neat game-show like reveal on the Awards page: https://2018.stateofjs.com/awards/
The short over-all Conclusion page covers the rate of change in JavaScript GraphQL’s ascendence: https://2018.stateofjs.com/conclusion/

Google’s Flutter SDK and the Holy Grail of Mobile Cross-platform Development

In software development, there is this holy grail of write once, run everywhere. The goal is to write one piece of code that runs in an optimized way (code/compile/UI efficiency) on different hardware. Recent emphasis on Mobile-first design has shifted this pursuit to cross-platform mobile development.

Flutter is an open-source mobile application development SDK created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android and iOS, as well as being the primary method of creating applications for Google Fuchsia.

The long and short of it is that this is a cross-platform development environment/language. Its biggest competitor is React Native.

I’ve come across an excellent article by Marco Bellinaso covering his learning and use of Flutter: “Flutter: the good, the bad and the ugly”. This article is great in that it pulls no punches and it provides resources to anyone that’s interested in learning and using Flutter.

Thoughts? Feedback? Let me know: @eli4d on Twitter

The Ship of Theseus and Story Loops

Imaginary Worlds is one of my favorite podcasts. The most recent episode was amazing in how it related the question of identity through the Ship of Theseus, Westworld, and Star Trek.

There is much that I could say about it, but I think that it would be best to listen to it. So let me leave you with a quote from the podcast that was great:

It (i.e. Westworld) taps into the fact that we’re all on story loops. Some of these story loops are created by us, sometimes they’re created by society, but either way, after a while you just tend to go through the motions (i.e. just like the hosts on Westworld). And every so often it’s good to stop and reflect if this is the version of you that you want to be. It’s easy – all you have to do is ‘freeze all motor functions’.

Building cross-platform apps in Python

I’m not sure if cross platform development is like a unicorn in the software field. Whether it was Java’s “write once, run anywhere” promise or Electron’s pitch of “build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS”.

I came across an interesting project whose goal is to provide cross-platform development for Python. The BeeWare Project “aims to take the power of Python as a language, and use it to enable users of all skill levels to develop applications with native user interfaces.” This may be an interesting project for those focusing on learning Python.