If you read my blogs, you might have noticed that I express my views and explain points from my point of view. But today's article is a special one.
I am going to interview 3 technical bloggers about their views and opinions and get to know their points of view!
So let's get started!
Let's start off with the first question!
Q. What are your opinions on mobile development and how was your journey of becoming a mobile developer?
This question was answered by Gourav Khunger
A. My journey of becoming an Android developer was kind of an accident. We got to learn the basics of HTML in 7th grade, I was fascinated. Though what we were taught wasn't in-depth, the idea that we can use those things to make websites intrigued me. I went on to learn HTML and CSS on my own and published a really basic website on my own. But I thought it was not enough, to make full-stack apps I would need to know javascript, and also the sites I made weren't that good in terms of UI, so I would need to get better on CSS. On the other hand, if I made better designs, the files would become a lot big even for single-page apps. Not knowing how to work with any tools like Tailwind, Chakra UI, or other frameworks like React.js, which could make the process a bit intuitive, made me drift away from web dev.
From here, I went on to try other things, got to know about Android, learned the basics from an amazing book by J. F. Dimarzio titled "Beginning Android Programming with android studio". Learned from tutorials online, engaged with the StackOverflow community. Honestly, I find native app dev better than web because it gives a different adrenaline rush to see the code compile into an app that can run on a real device in hand (natively), also it being more intuitive than web dev, at least for me.
That's how I am an Android dev now.
Q. Why you chose Kotlin over other mobile development languages?
This question was answered by Gourav Khunger
A. I personally started with Java, because Kotlin was not that famous back then. and migrated only recently, just 4-5 months or so. I like native app development because it gives flexibility on what we can achieve with the code. Cross-platform is a really good choice if one needs to write a single codebase that compiles to run on multiple platforms, but there are more disadvantages to it than native. The primary concern being the set of things you can achieve, native dev gives you complete freedom of customization you want to have, and you can access the system-level APIs under the hood. Whereas the cross-platform side uses a layer of other APIs that combine to be able to access the hardware features. In simple words, native code can perform better with the hardware than non-native code. And, there are certain limitations on what features of a device, the non-native code can access.
That's why I use Kotlin now:
- Freedom to use system components out of the box
- It is intuitive, let me give you a really basic example of swapping two numbers. A really basic approach would be to assign a temporary variable and then do the swap and get the value from the temp variable later:
int a = 5;
int b = 6;
int temp = a;
a = b;
b = temp
That's a lot of code, where in kotlin its just:
var a = 5
var b = 6
a = b.also { b = a }
Kotlin makes it a lot easier to achieve things so its definitely fun to try it out.
Q. What is your point of view on TypeScript and how is it useful to us
This question was answered by Anish De
A. I started working with Typescript about 2 weeks ago and I am liking it very much. Typescript obviously has the advantage of being type-safe and is better to be used in production code as there will be lesser chances of bugs. I use Visual Studio Code as my preferred code editor and I am informed about errors as I code so I don't need to save the file, wait for the code to compile, and then be greeted by an error. This, often, makes coding faster. Also, autocomplete has gotten way better after I started using Typescript. Javascript is something we must learn for web development and is fine for learning and hobby projects but Typescript is a necessary skill when you are developing a proper application and is a skill that might help you in the future. Knowing Typescript also helps you understand open-source code and make contributions easily as most major projects use Typescript nowadays.
Q. Which code editor and ide would you choose and give a few reasons
This question was answered by Anish De
A. I use and like to use Visual Studio Code. It is lightweight, has got a lot of extensions making it IDE-like, and, probably, has the largest user base. Finding a plugin for vscode is extremely easy and everyone makes a plugin, first for vscode than any other IDE. For example, GitHub Copilot is only available on vscode as of now. Vscode is also great as a text editor with a lot of keyboard shortcuts making coding easier and faster. It is extremely customizable and is also open source. I also like to use the terminal for most things and with vscode's integrated terminal, that gets easier. I have used other IDEs like webstorm before but webstorm is paid, quite clumsy to use, does not support nextjs, and has many more cons. Vscode also has advanced features like a git GUI and if you feel like you are missing something, there will be a plugin to help you out. It also integrates well with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), something I used to use before I switched to Linux.
Q. You are currently writing a series on react native if I'm not mistaken. So what are your views on react native and how does it impact our lives in the context of mobile dominant future
This question was answered by Arjun Joshi
A. I believe React Native is a great cross-platform technology, for people who wanna migrate their website to an app. Most of the world is using React to build websites and nowadays everyone is going mobile. Therefore, it should be easy for developers to migrate their apps. React Native has helped a lot in that sense. It is a cross-platform technology, which allows you to build apps for both Android and IOS maintaining only one codebase and it follows the same structure as React.js. It is a perfect win-win situation for us.
##. Q. How did you start blogging? Describe your journey
This question was answered by Arjun Joshi
A. I basically got started with technical writing because a friend of mine, Avneesh Agarwal, was doing it and I wanted to give it a shot. I have always loved blogging. I wrote a very clichè blog but to my surprise, it blew up. It got featured on daily.dev and that gave me the motivation and fuel to keep going. Now I write tutorial kinds of articles on a few rare topics. Technical blogging is amazing and it helps me learn a lot of things every single day!!!
So these were some views and opinions of some other technical writers and I hope you found them useful!
Thank you!
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