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Hey everyone,
Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!
We had a bit of a slow year in terms of devRant updates, but we gained some momentum towards the end of the year and we're looking forward to carrying it into 2020. Recently, we launched what I think are our coolest new avatar items yet (https://devrant.com/rants/2322869/...) and behind the scenes we got our iOS/Android apps on the latest version of the frameworks we use, which will help us continue to improve stability. Still, we definitely would have liked to do more, but we're optimistic the coming year will bring great things for devRant.
One thing we are very proud of is this year we had our best year ever in terms of platform stability and uptime. Despite the platform growing and our userbase growing, we had almost no complete app downtime even though our infrastructure is minimal. A large part of this is thanks to devRant++ supporters, who allow us to maintain a small but effective tier of infrastructure and redundancy.
In the coming year, we're going to launch one of our most ambitious initiatives yet, and we're also going to continue to improve the devRant experience itself. We want to try to gather more user feedback, so we'll be working on a way to do that too. Stay tuned, more on this stuff coming soon.
As always, thank you everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community! And thank you to our awesome devRant++ supporters for continuing to be the main drivers to keeping devRant up and running.
Looking forward to 2020,
- David and Tim
28 -
Welcome back to practiseSafeHex's new life as a manager.
Episode 2: Why automate when you can spend all day doing it by hand
This is a particularly special episode for me, as these problems are taking up so much of my time with non-sensical bullshit, that i'm delayed with everything else. Some badly require tooling or new products. Some are just unnecessary processes or annoyances that should not need to be handled by another human. So lets jump right in, in no particular order:
- Jira ... nuff said? not quite because somehow some blue moon, planets aligning, act of god style set of circumstances lined up to allow this team to somehow make Jira worse. On one hand we have a gigantic Jira project containing 7 separate sub teams, a million different labels / epics and 4.2 million possible assignees, all making sure the loading page takes as long as possible to open. But the new country we've added support for in the app gets a separate project. So we have product, backend, mobile, design, management etc on one, and mobile-country2 on another. This delightfully means a lot of duplication and copy pasting from one to the other, for literally no reason what so ever.
- Everything on Jira is found through a label. Every time something happens, a new one is created. So I need to check for "iOS", "Android", "iOS-country2", "Android-country2", "mobile-<feature>", "mobile-<feature>-issues", "mobile-<feature>-prod-issues", "mobile-<feature>-existing-issues" and "<project>-July31" ... why July31? Because some fucking moron decided to do a round of testing, and tag all the issues with the current date (despite the fact Jira does that anyway), which somehow still gets used from time to time because nobody pays attention to what they are doing. This means creating and modifying filters on a daily basis ... after spending time trying to figure out what its not in the first one.
- One of my favourite morning rituals I like to call "Jira dumpster diving". This involves me removing all the filters and reading all the tickets. Why would I do such a thing? oh remember the 9000 labels I mentioned earlier? right well its very likely that they actually won't use any of them ... or the wrong ones ... or assign to the wrong person, so I have to go find them and fix them. If I don't, i'll get yelled at, because clearly it's my fault.
- Moving on from Jira. As some of you might have seen in your companies, if you use things like TestFlight, HockeyApp, AppCenter, BuddyBuild etc. that when you release a new app version for testing, each version comes with an automated change-log, listing ticket numbers addressed ...... yeah we don't do that. No we use this shitty service, which is effectively an FTP server and a webpage, that only allows you to host the new versions. Sending out those emails is all manual ... distribution groups?? ... whats that?
- Moving back to Jira. Can't even automate the changelog with a script, because I can't even make sense of the tickets, in order to translate that to a script.
- Moving on from Jira. Me and one of the remote testers play this great game I like to call "tag team ticketing". It's so much fun. Right heres how to play, you'll need a QA and a PM.
*QA creates a ticket, and puts nothing of any use inside it, and assigns to the PM.
*PM fires it back asking for clarification.
*QA adds in what he feels is clarification (hes wrong) and assigns it back to the PM.
*PM sends detailed instructions, with examples as to what is needed and assigns it back.
*QA adds 1 of the 3 things required and assigns it back.
*PM assigns it back saying the one thing added is from the wrong day, and reminds him about the other 2 items.
*QA adds some random piece of unrelated info to the ticket instead, forgetting about the 3 things and assigns it back.
and you just continue doing this for the whole dev / release cycle hahaha. Oh you guys have no idea how much fun it is, seriously give it a go, you'll thank me later ... or kill yourselves, each to their own.
- Moving back to Jira. I decided to take an action of creating a new project for my team (the mobile team) and set it up the way we want and just ignore everything going on around us. Use proper automation, and a kanban board. Maybe only give product a slack bot interface that won't allow them to create a ticket without what we need etc. Spent 25 minutes looking for the "create new project" button before finding the link which says I need to open a ticket with support and wait ... 5 ... fucking ... long ... painful ... unnecessary ... business days.
... Heres hoping my head continues to not have a bullet hole in it by then.
Id love to talk more, but those filters ain't gonna fix themselves. So we'll have to leave it here for today. Tune in again for another episode soon.
And remember to always practiseSafeHex13 -
Client comes to me after a year to publish an update to his app.
I accept, start looking for my release key.... Found it.
Fuuuuuuucccck what's the password? I can't remember
Googled what to do if forgot password of keystore: Nope can't do shit other than brute Force. You've to forget your app and publish as a new app. Nice.
I must have written it somewhere... I'm sure. Check my password manager: Nope.
Start brute forcing:
Default pass: android. Nope
Name of app? Nope
After 10 mins of brute forcing:
Why would I not store the password in my password manager? The only reason I can think is the password is too stupid to be stored.
Try "password". App signed successfully.
I'm ashamed of 1 year older me xD6 -
We are on a roll here people (side note, if You are joining the site, thank you but if you are using disposable email accounts at least wait for the verification code to arrive to said account):
So our most well know and belowed CMS that brings lots of love and feels to those that have to (still) deal with it, had some interesting going on:
Oh Joy! "Backdoor in Captcha Plugin Affects 300K WordPress Sites", well arent You a really naughty little boy, eh?
https://wordfence.com/blog/2017/...
Remember that "little" miner thingy that some users here has thought about using for their site? Even Yours truly that does make use of Ads Networks (fuck you bandwidth is not free) even I have fully condenmed the Miner type ads for alot of reasons, like your computer being used as a literal node for DDoSing, well... how about your "Antivirus" Android phone apps being literally loaded with miner trojans too?
https://securelist.com/jack-of-all-...
"When You literally stopped giving any resembles of a fuck what people think about Your massive conglomerate since You still literally dominate the market since alot of people give zero fucks of how Orwellian We are becoming at neck-breaking speed" aka Google doesnt want other webbrowsers to get into market, Its happy with having MemeFox as its competitor:
https://theregister.co.uk/2017/12/...
Talking about MemeFox fucking up again:
https://theregister.co.uk/2017/12/...
And of course here at Legion Front we cant make finish a report without our shitting at Amazon news report:
"French gov files €10m complaint: Claims Amazon abused dominance
Probe found unfair contracts for sellers"
More News at:
https://legionfront.me/page/news
And for what you may actually came and not me reporting stuff at Legion's Orwell Hour News™ ... the free games, right?:
Oxenfree is free in GoG, its a good game, I played like 2 months after its release and I think I heard they wanted to make a Live Action movie or some sort of thing after it:
https://www.gog.com/game/oxenfree
Kingdom Classic is also free:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/...
Close Order Steam Key: HWRMI-2V3PQ-ZQX8B
More Free Keys at:
https://legionfront.me/ccgr
4 -
//
// devRant unofficial UWP update (v2.0.0-beta7)
//
After "Active Discussions" (implemented in v2.0.0-beta5), it was time to implement the last missing app section, "Collabs".
This is the biggest update since the start of the public beta, over 100 changes (new features, improvements, fixes).
Changelog (v2.0.0-beta7):
- Support for Collabs
- Notifs Tabs
- & more... read the entire changelog here: https://jakubsteplowski.com/en/...
Microsoft Store: https://microsoft.com/store/apps/...
I'm really happy to announce that the unofficial UWP client has now 100% of the features available on the official Android and iOS apps (if we don't count Push Notifs 😝 but they will arrive soon too).
It took several months of hard work, but I made it... it's here, it reached the level I wanted to reach since the beginning of this project (May 2016) (if we don't count Push Notifs).
I did it a lot of times, but I think they deserve it everytime, I would like to thank all the people who made this possible, all the active users, who opened issues, suggested features, or just used my app and had fun, posted positives (and negatives, motherfuckers, just kidding, maybe) reviews on Microsoft Store etc.
The entire community who made me want to do this project.
You're amazing guys!
Of course this is not the end of this project, I want to bring the app out of the beta and support it until I will be able to do it, releasing updates almost simultaneously with @dfox and @trogus.
Planned to be done:
- Support for Anniversary Update
- Push Notifs
- Custom Themes
- Close the 15+ issues (features requests, fixes) on the issue tracker on GitHub
- Ranti by @Alice: Your devRant Assistant <- I really hope it will become a thing :)
- Your future suggestions -> post them here: https://github.com/JakubSteplowski/...
Thanks for the attention,
Good ranting!
10 -
Recap: https://www.devrant.io/rants/878300
I was out Thursday at the Hospital. I'm what the doctors would call "Ill as fuck"
So, Friday I’m back in the office to the usual: "How was that appointment?"
I know people mean well when they ask this. So, I do the polite thing and tell them it went as well as it could.
Realistically it does't matter how well it went... They haven't cured Crohn's because I showed up to the appointment. They know I'm fucked already.
But, push it down, add it to the future aneurism.
I had to go through the usual resignation meetings with managers:
"We"re fucked now you're going"
"yep"
"we need to get a handle on how fucked"
"already done that for you, here"s a trello board, very fucked."
"we need to put a plan together to drop all the junior devs in the shit with the work you’ve been doing"
"You need about 4 devs, please refer to the previous trello board for your plan"
Meanwhile, me and Morpheus are in constant communication because all of this is like a Shakespearean comedy.
So, I overhear a conversation between a Junior Dev and the Solution Architect.
[SA] took over the project because he knows better than two tried and tested senior devs -_- (fuckwit).
JD: "It took me one and a half days to build it out"
SA: "Yeah, it must have taken me twice as long... It must be a problem with the project, you should just be able to check it out and run it."
JD: "I know, it has to be wrong"
All of this is about Morpheus' work of art, of an Ionic 3 hybrid app.
I fumed quietly at my desk because I've been ordered by the Stazi to be hands off.
Since Morpheus and me were pulled from the project [JD] and [JD2] were dropped into it to get it over the line.
It"s unfortunate and I was clear and honest with my advice to them: I personally would not take over the project because I"d be way out of my depth... Oh, and the App works, so uh, there's no work to do.
They have been constantly at our desks. Asking fuckdiculous questions about how to perform basic tasks. So they can get Morpheus" frigging masterpiece to the user.
It"s like watching that touch up of jesus that got borked by an amateur. Shit I have google, it's like watching this happen: http://ti.me/NnNSAb
[JD] came to me Friday evening.
"I can’t get this to build to iOS or install on [Test Analyst]'s phone."
Me: "No worries brother, where are you stuck right now?"
[JD] describes the first steps with clear indication he hasn't googled his problem.
Life lesson: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lmgtfy
Que an hour of me showing [JD] how to build an Ion3 project for iOS. Fuck it, your man's in a bind and he"s asked politely for help. I can show him quicker than he can read 3 sets of docos.
I took him through 'ionic cordova build ios', the archive and release processes in XCode 9, then the apk bundling process for droid. Finally we have an MAM so the upload process for that too.
All the while cleaning up his AppIDs, Profiles, deployment attempts.
Damn they were a mess.
I did this with a smile on my face, not because I could say "I told you so"... But. because when any developer asks you how to do something. If you know how to do it, you should always be happy to learn them some new tricks!
Dude's alright, he's been dropped in the shit. Now I know how badly so I'll help him learn things that are useful to his role, but aren't project specific.
As a plausi-senior dev (I'll tell you about that later); it's my job to make sure my team have what they need to go home smiling!
I’m not a hateful fucker, the guy asked me an honest question so I am happy to give him the honest answer.
I took him through it a few times and explained a few best practices. Most were how to do his AppID and ProvProfile set up. Good lad, took it all on board.
However! In his frustration, he pointed the finger at Morpheus' "David" (ref: Michelangelo).
He miraculously morphed into a shiny colourful parrot and fed me SA's line:
"you should just be able to build from a clean clone"
My response was calm and clear:
"You can, it took me 20 minutes on Thursday evening. I was bored and curios, so I wanted to validate Morpheus' work. Here it is on my iOS device and my Android device. It would have taken me 5 if my laptop wasn’t so horrifically out of date."
I validated Morpheus' work so I have evidence, I trust that brilliant bastard.
I just need to be able to prove it's good.
[JD] took this on board.
Maybe listening to two tried and trusted senior devs is better than listening to a headstrong Solution Architect.
When JD left for the weekend I was working a late one (https://www.devrant.io/rants/874765).
His sign off was beautiful.
"I think I can happily admit defeat on this one, it can wait until Monday."
To which I replied: "no worries brother, if you need a hand give me a shout."
Rule 1: Don't be a cunt.
Rule 2: If someone needs help and you can give it: Give it!
Rule 3: Don't interrupt James' cigarette time.
Rule 4: goto Rule 3.4 -
PM: Ok Android, i've reviewed the latest build, you are good to release. Waiting on iOS's build to test.
Me: ... are we not holding all builds until we hear back from backend about that bug?, as we likely have to change something on our side?
PM: Which bug?
Me: ... the only one we discussed yesterday in the team meeting.
PM: How many customers is it affecting?
Me: that we know of, one ... the CEO of our company
PM: oh that one, yeah were not doing that anymore.
Me: WHAT? i've been waiting all day / night to hear back. Why are we not doing this?
PM: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... Everything is too messy at the minute anyway, the release plan is changing every day. Need to keep it back in line.
Me: ... the plan has changed exactly once. We had a plan at the start of last week for the last release, we changed it YESTERDAY to include 2 critical bug fixes. The only issue with the plan changing is nobody telling us these aren't bugs anymore
PM: We can discuss tomorrow in the team meeting.
CEO: oh hey guys, yeah we pulled that bug fix. Its not really a bug, more like a missing feature. No way it will get done before xmas. Going to live with the way it works for now and fix it properly next year.
Me: Ok, fair enough, but we really need to be told these decisions.
CEO: sure, sorry, didn't think anyone was blocked by this. What was the blocker?
Me: ..... you asked me yesterday to get this bug fix in the build ... you asked for the final build to be made today so we can go through the app store review. As we all discussed yesterday, today is kind of the last day we can really do this.
CEO: ok, its late, we can discuss this tomorrow in the team meeting.
Me: ..... ..... ..... ..... sure7 -
Fuck Apple and its review system
So, this started in december. We wanted to publsih an app, after years of development.
Submit to review, and passes on the first try. Well, what do you know. We are on manual release option, so we can release together with the android counterpart. Well yes, but someone notices that the app name is not what was aggreed (App Name instead of AppName). Okay, should be easy, submit the same app, just the name changed. If it passed once, it will pass again, right? HAH
Rejected, because the description, why we use the device’s camera is too general. Well... its the purpose of the app... but whatever, i read the guidelines, okay, its actually documented with exapmles. BUT THEN WHY THE FUCK COULDNT YOU SAY THAT ON THE FIRST UPLOAD?
Whatever, fix it, new version, accepted, ready to release just in time.
It doesindeed roll out,but of course, we notice that the app has a giant issue, but only on specific phones. None of our test phones had this problem, but those who have, essentially cannot use our program. Nasty as it is, the fix is really easy, done in 5 minutes. Upload it asap, literally nothing changed from user point of view, except now it doesnt crash on said devices. Meanwhile 1 star reviews are arriving from these users - of course with all the right. Apple should allow this patch quickly, right? HAH
THE REAL BULLSHIT COMES NOW
With only config files changed, the same binary uploaded we get rejected? What now? Lets read it. “Metadata rejected, no need to upload new binary”.... oh fine only the store page is wrong? Easy. Read the message, what went wrong. “Referencing third party content is nit permitted on the app store” meaning that no android test device should be shown. Fine, your rules. They even send a picutre of the offending element. BUT ITS NOT EVEN ON THE STORE. THATS A SCREENSHOT OF THE APP. HOW IS THAT METADATA? I ask about this, and i get a reply, from either a bot, or a person who cant speak or read english, and only pasted a sample answer, repeating the previous message. WTF. Fine, i guess you are dumb, but since they stop replying to our queries, do the only sensible thing, re-record the offending tutorial video that actually contained an android device. This is about 2 weeks, after the first try to apply a simple patch to a broken app. And still, how did it pass the review 2 times?
Whatever, reupload again, play the waiting game for a week, when the promised average wait time is 2 days, they hit us with a message, that they want to know what patent we use in our apps core functionality. WTF WHY NOW? It didnt bother you for a month, let it release ti production and now you delay a simple patch for this? We send them what they know. Aaaaand they reply: sorry we need more time to review your app. FUUUUUUCKKK YOUUU. You are reviewing a PATCH with close to zero functional change!!! Then, this shit goes on, every week we ask about an ETA, always asking for patience... at the end it took another 3 weeks... so december 15 to jan 21 in total...
FOR. A. SINGLE. FUCKING. PATCH
Bottom line is what is infurating, apple cares that there is an android device in the tutorial video, but they dont care that a significant percentage of our users simply cannot use the app.
Im done7 -
After a few years of dreaming about becoming an Android Developer, I am almost ready to release my fully native Android app in Google Play. Wish me luck 😊7
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Joined a new company / team to work on an iOS app that has 2 different backend environments "Dev" and "Prod". Also being referred to in iOS speak as "Debug" and "Release".
Been trying to get accounts on these backends (no sign up in app, its controlled via another process). Eventually get access to "Dev" for one of the regions, so I load up "Debug" and its not working.
This is odd, so I open the Android app and load "Dev" and it works? I then Notice Android has "Dev", "QA", "Staging" and "Prod" for every region where as iOS only has 2 of these.
So I go back to iOS and find the file for the settings and it has iOS Debug assigned a variable for the backend Dev ... which is actually pointing to QA. Because they use QA to Debug and not Dev.
... confused? join the club4 -
Two years ago, I developed an security app for Android as a school project. I didn't like teamwork at school (you know, you do all the work and everyone else is getting the same grade you receive, specially if you are the nerd of the class), actually I hated it, so I made it alone.
Its name was "Alex" and was a simple "panic button". You can configure two emergency emails and phone numbers (contacts only, not police) and, if you're in danger, you just have to press the button and the app is gonna send two messages/emails to your contacts: the first one, to tell where are you (GPS, only the name of the place) and that you're in problems. The second one with an audio/photo file of the situation.
Sounds like a great app, and I tested it few times. The reason I didn't continue with this is that I got my first job and I had not time, and that, tree or four months later, the government (of the city) launched a similar app. Less sophisticated, but I think it's still useful: "No estoy sola"(I'm not alone). I haven't tested it cause I don't trust on the authorities, I'd preffer to send my location to a friend through messenger app instead.
I don't know if I should re-work this app (I didn't released it, I just have the beta) or work on something else. I'm afraid that, if I release it, someone could die or get kidnapped because of a bug or something going wrong with the app :c What do you think?5 -
Agreed to work on a mobile app project on Android. No contract signed, just was given what the client wanted from this sub-contractor.
No specific details given, had to figure out a lot of the minute details of how they wanted the application to behave. We would deliver a working part of the product before getting a % of the pay. We charged $30 /hr on a mobile app, low as heck.
It was me and another developer, neither of us had any contact with the clients to ask questions, all questions had to go through the sub-contractor. Many arguments and months later we find that what they're asking for only a phone manufacturer can do. Sub-contractor blames us for not doing our "research" when she/he was the only one able to contact the client to get requirements.
Sub-contractor wanted us to refund money. We declined but offered solutions.
Sub-contractor goes to client and manages to get approval of what we were able to do. Finally a light in this dark tunnel spanning 7 months.
On the day of releasing to the client the finished app, we get notification from Google that the app won't be published due to a recent policy change that came into effect in January. WTF.
Go back to sub-contractor, tell the bad news. Once again he/she says it's our fault for not doing the "research". Yeah as if we knew what Google is going to change. Asks for paid money back. We refuse.
We lastly suggested that we remove what Google wants removed on the app and release it that way.
We had billed 300 hours cumulative divided among 3 people (including the sub-contractor who didn't appear to do anything), and just 2 months of development. It's been 7 months and we were only paid for 240 hours, the rest was unpaid, and the sub-contractor still wants to make us give it back. /rant13 -
When I got the current job I started to work on an Android app that a coworker which left the company was doing.
The app was ready at about 40% and was barely usable, it lacked a lot of features and multithreading so with a huge amount of data it used to crash (Android doesn't allow you to make the app freeze for more than 2-3 seconds, it considers that the app is not responding anymore).
After a week or two the work to do was still huge, but one day one of my coworkers came in and ask me if I was able to release a beta for a client the same day... Unexpected deadline.
I spent 8 hour fixing as many bugs as possible and adding multithreading in the most weak parts.
I did it but it was so stressful and the result wasn't even great. In fact I finished the stable version 7 months later.4 -
Few years ago as a junior android dev with couple years of self taught experience of working in startups I submitted a simple android app assignment for a junior android dev role. Assignment had only like 8 requirements so I followed them to the letter. That didn't end well.
App was simple just 3 screens. Login screen with username and password input fields, login button.
Had to call a login endpoint after login button was clicked, redirecting to home screen, calling items endpoint, displaying a list of items and when an item was clicked passing item data and redirect to item details screen.
Needless to say big swinging dick senior was not impressed. UI was not perfect, I forgot to display a loading animation when fetching data, didnt handle back button properly.
I agreed with some points but other comments were clearly just nitpicking: his preferred variable naming conventions, his opinions on architecture that was not up to his standard (official google arch at the time was not up to his standard).
He also was mad that app wasn't prepared for release to googleplay (another out of the ass requirement). Like I would prepare a 3 screen app for prod release that he will forget ever existed after 20min of his review.
Lots more of nitpicking, encapsulation this encapsulation that, omg now hes shocked that there are a few warnings after the project is built.
Regardless my self confidence was destroyed at that point and after few more negative experiences I dropped android dev alltogether for a couple years and switched to game dev.
After game dev ran its course I went back to android dev and found a supportive place where I could grow.
Looking back, they were actually hiring atleast a mid level for a junior position but I was grilled as a senior. The guy literally didnt wrote any single positive thing in that review about my code even tho my senior peers said my project was decent back then, its just that I didnt handle a few edge cases and that's all.
I looked up the guy in linkedin, turns out hes a uni dropout who posts all books that he red about software dev in his education section of his linkedin profile. Found a bunch of other narcissistic stuff on his profile. Guy was a fucking idiot. Even if I worked under him it would have probably sucked.
Learned some important lessons I guess. Always get a second, 3rd and 4th opinion and dont take criticism too seriously. Always check what kind of person is providing feedback.4 -
6 hours to make my Ionic cordova app build with native google maps plugin without a problem.
Deploy on my cell.
Not compatible with android 4.4.4.
FUCK YOU SONY! RELEASE A FUCKING UPGRADE TO THIS FUCKING PHONE ALREADY. FUCK YOU XPERIA T33 -
Follow up to previous rant:
Now after I realised that I'm a stupid motherfucker, today was release day. Or so it was planned.
Because turned out my colleagues/supervisors didn't tell me to test the app on Android 6 devices and I was sure that if it ran on the device they gave me (which I assumed was the only device of our clients) it'd be sufficient.
Now it was tested on an android 6 device and crashed constantly.
Wow... I mean... Just wow... Now because I don't have a working android 6 device (a colleague of mine is on vacation and locked our development devices for a different app into a drawer) I have to get the emulator working which took me about 2 hours because that dumb shit face of a laptop first didn't have the android-sdk-root set (took me a good hour to realise) and then the kernel for the avds was missing.
Also: windows updates.
FUUUUUUUUUUUU....
(PS: yeah I should have tested it on various devices and made sure it worked on at least most of them without being told so. Another example for my stupidity.)
EDIT: Now I don't have enough disc space for the kernel I need to install. Absofuckingfantastic1 -
Did anyone ever felt that everyday is a loop? Mine is as follows
Bug Reported -> Try to reproduce -> Check on web -> Check iOS -> Check iOS 13.x -> Update or get hold of other simulator/devices -> Check iOS 13.x2 -> Fix it -> Now it breaks on Android -> Fix it -> Get it QAd -> QA feels their should be some more design changes -> Make him/her understand that what is priority for now -> Now everyone has started testing app and everyone have their opinion (designers are asleep at this point) -> Get all of the team in sync -> Start release -> 99% -> Some yells "wait" -> One more thing -> Sleep with nightmares -> Repeat
PS: We have a responsive web application that is also wrapped in Cordova for iOS and Android.5 -
I released an Android lib on JCenter.
So far so good. What I didn't realize was that I had a terrible bug related to a content provider.
Since I was using the ContentProvider to make my CursorLoader work, if someone installed an app with my lib, you couldn't install another one with it because it would conflict the providers.
I had to quickly find a solution and dispatch a new release. -
It's 3am, just submitted an app for review for iOS... go to take one last test drive on the release build for android, and I get stuck in an infinite loop of "system up stopped working". An factory reset and an hour later, I'm saying fuck this, android waits, and fuck whatever Xamarin did to my phone. While I'm at it, fuck Apple for making me have 20+ icons in different sizes, and their shitty walled garden approach to a so called marketplace.4
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I was kinda proud, when I released a new test version of my android app, since I had a couple of new features and bug fixes. As soon as I told a friend of mine about it he found a error that has never occured before in the method. This only happens in the release build. Why does it happen? BECAUSE SOME DAMM VIEWS WANT TO BE INITIALIZED AFTER DAMM THE APP HAS BEEN PAUSED/MINIMIZED1
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Cordova or Xamarin?
I need to build a mobile app again, mostly for Android, because an interior Official app's functionality is so interior (written but monkeys) that it has finally pissed me of enough to take action.... And possibly be profitable (ads banner).
Mostly targeting Android but hey why not hit them all or at least also UWP.. I ain't paying for the Apple license... (Or maybe dfox could help release it...)
Anyway, which is better? I kinda want to pick up React and maybe try Typescript? (currently work with MEA(v1)N at work)
But I also use C# WPF, but mostly for my own projects these days when I need a desktop GUI.
I don't really feel like relearning Android SDK, I learned the SDK back when it was for Ice Cream.8 -
So, funny story with a bit of self promotion at the end.
I was recently checking out some apps on playstore and found that my first ever , "launched just to experiment" app (released 1.5 years ago) has received more than 5k downloads . I was very happy about that so posted a small message on LinkedIn .
Now , my LinkedIn profile consists of 98% people who are totally strangers and never met me ( is it just me or do you also get a lot of stranger connect requests there?). So my usual post rarely ever goes beyond 5 or 6 likes.
Bit idk how there too my post got 35+ likes and now i was on cloud9.
So i finally decided to kick my ass and release some update to that app ( it had around 70% pity comments like "nice first app,but it should have this x feature",. "overall nice but it could use an x feature " etc.
And boy what my journey was in the last 72hours.
Firstly my madhead laptop started killing me with the battery failures and constant hang.
Then my past asshole self tried to give me a middle finger. So i have this whole partition in my memory where i keep my Android stuff and apps. It has a special folder named published zone and i keep all my published app codes and related files there.
I was fairly certain that this app's code eill be also there,so i opened it, found the code and tried running it.
Turns out my asshole self had tried to mess around the code so much that all the db layer WAS fucked up, all the ui WAS changed and no code was working.
"Not to worry", i thought. I always use git and there would be a correct version some commits before. WRONG. I HAD CHANGED THE WHOLE FUCKING WORKING PRODUCTION CODE AND DIDN'T MAINTAIN A VCS!
Also this was the verbose and shitty java code my 1.5 year before self so loved to write, so it was taking me way more time to figure out what's happening in an already fucked up code.
So i tried a couple of ways to get back my working code :
- I tried looking for a google recommended solution. Those guys take my whole app code build and distribute via playstore, but they provide no means to retrieve back the original code.
- i checked my (occasionally) back up hard disk but no. My hard disk would have 100s of movies from 2016 , but not a useful piece of fuckin code.
- i also tried to get my apk and decompile it via some online decompiler. Here the google again fucks up and don't allow me to get my apk directly. Meanwhile i found a ton of shady websites which are hosting an apk of my app without my knowledge O_o . I tried to decompile on of them but code was even more non understandable than my fuck up code.
So i ended up looking at both the mess up code and decompiled code and coded the whole app from scratch ( well not scratch, i extracted the resources and some undamaged activities from the mess up code . Also github was down for more than 3 hours yesterday , at the same time when i was trying to look onto some repositories)
Lessons learned:
- DON'T FUCK UP WITH THE PRODUCTION CODE
- MAINTAIN VCS
- Your laptop is shit reliable, github is also shit reliable , so save code at multiple places.
- there are way more copies of your code lying on the internet than you think.
Checkout my app here :https://play.google.com/store/apps/...2 -
To Android developers:
ALWAYS use annotations for service classes when using minifyEnabled option in build.gradle!! I learn it in the hard way 😐 -
- graduate from college
- live by myself
- release my first android app on the play store
- replace Windows with linux on my dev laptop
- get a job that I love1 -
TL;DR Asus is a scumbag company when it comes to software.
I love Asus, they make awesome hardware but man do they blow ass when it comes to software and their customer support. They had perfectly working Link To MyAsus app (on Windows and Android) but no no no, we have to release updates and break this shit. Now I cannot use my phone as a webcam.
Fuck this shit.5 -
So we develop several apps for Android.
And since the whole company is full of .Net developers we´re using Xamarin.
That piece of software alone is worth more than one rant.
But today someone called and said he updated to the latest version he got from our server.
But now one of the menu points in the settings menu is opening the wrong mask.
I´m like ... what? Who fucked that one up now. Ok...
I look at the code and, I didn´t expect it to be honest, but it looks alright.
The menu point has the correct id. The function "OnOptionsItemSelected" looks for the correct id and opens the correct activity.
Just to be sure I also check the activity.
Everything good.
So I start up an emulator. Deploy the app in debug. Works correctly.
Create a self signed apk and install it on the emulator. Works.
Repeat the same with a tablet and my personal phone. It works.
Then I install the apk from the server and would you look at that.
It opens the wrong mask.
So it seems only if the app is compiled on the release server it shows that strange behaviour.
And for the love of my 1080ti I can´t figure out what causes it...
Thank you Xamarin! -
So... Got upgraded to android 8.1
First impression... Dark theme ? (my dark background may help),
Everything got darker.
Second, folders are ugly as fuck (rounded, cutting half the icons) .
And third : fuck shit got fast.
If I tought my phone had no lag I was wrong... Now it starts apps instantly (plus the app launch time) it also got preetyer, looks like a hologram again the background.
Me approves.
Release info: https://xda-developers.com/android-...
Checking new features now but nothing really important
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how to manage estimates of release, not getting heck of it at all from long time,. specifically, for android app.2
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!rant
Just started a side project, helping a friend make his Android app more stable and add a couple more features. We'll release the sources sometime later.
Gotta say, his code is just terrible. And it runs on top of some code written by someone else, and that's even worse.
But I don't know how I got the motivation to spend the whole Saturday cleaning it up, fixing warnings, making abstractions, extracting features to separate classes, converting some stuff to Kotlin, even adding a couple coroutines. It felt good fixing bad code.
Maybe because I have some coding freedom I kinda miss at work.
Maybe because the project is not that big.
Maybe because I know the guy has many skills, coding is just not one of them.
Maybe because that project has some cool in it I can't even describe.
Maybe because that's entirely within my skills but challenging enough to have fun working on it.
Or maybe is just the mood of the moment, and in a week or so I'll lose all the motivation, as it happened too many times.
🤷♂️2 -
First. I clarify my work schedule is from 7am to 4pm. I have a personal emergency so I must leave on time today.
Now my story: Today (finally) at noon they decide to publish the iOS and Android applications. The thing with the Android application is the other Developer is with a last minute improvement (since Monday) and is not over.
It's 2:45, the iOS app has already been sent for review, but Android is not. So when the Architect says that he already talked to the client and told him that everything is ready today, I asked the Developer if Android is already? and his response was "Almost I will finist at 3pm or 3:30".
(Hmmm) I'm worried about time so I say Ok, then Android will be published tomorrow! God he needs to finish the development, and I'm going to take new screenshot, do the merge with the development branch and everything that's need for a production release. So, the Project Manager says "Hell no! It will release today!" My answer: I have to leave at 4 and there is a lot of haste to do something so delicate.
I'm still waiting for an answer in slack from her.
Then the architect very "professionally" tells the other Developer to do it himself. It's almost 6pm and they still have not done anything -
How Microsoft expect anyone to develop using any technology they introduce with so many limitations.
Moi a Microsoft dumb enthusiast said to myself : hey dude you are a developer stop whining about the app gap bust a move create decent array of apps and release them, went into a full project management mode wrote requirements did sketches and some prototypes, time to execute.
1. first app: image files organizer, viewer , with some light editor capabilities and album creator after some work i came to discover that you don't have a proper file system APIs to show a folder tree view in my app "WTF" there are work arounds and dirty solutions but seriously? i can only access the stupid media folders created by Microsoft and that's it.
so i ditched the apps until uwp become a development tools with target audience other than kids who eat crayons, and while using "Edge" i thought to my self : "you know what dude extensions are cool and if you do something like a speed dial it would be awesome"
fire up my text editor started writing my extension to discover that:
"you cannot use localStorage from local HTML files".
moral of the story
MS is failing with consumers not because people hate MS but rather MS hates itself like no engineer over there said to him self this is fking stupid ?
other limitations :
no proper system tray access
no registry access what so ever
and i have started 2 days ago.
yeah Ms this is the main app gap problem the uwp sucks big time. compared to android Java which has a great access to every aspect of the device even apple provide better APIs for their systems.
if uwp is MS future then rip MS.
please i stand corrected if anyone knows better.2 -
Having a question regarding build number semantics (Im working on android app for that matter)
My current app build which is released is 5.3.6 (build number 94)
I already merged one feature to develop but haven't released it.
I also finished working on another feature but haven't merged it to develop yet.
Now my question is should I make a new build (5.4.0 with build number 95) and just merge to master, then release to google play (it would contain both two features)
Or should I make a new build 5.4.0 bn 95, merge to master, release it. And then make another build for the second feature 5.5.0 bn 96 and release that as well?
My reasoning would be to go with 2 separate builds and versions (in case my second feature messes up, I can revert it and also it will be easier to manage versions).
But then what about users: will they receive two updates from google play or only one (the latest version) ?3 -
I am launching an Android app in Play store for the firdt time, any To-do list that I should consider before launching it? already been thru SO to-do, anyone has anything more to add?4
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So here it is. Apple release, second round.
This time, uploads to AppStoreConnect took 3 hours and 40 minutes. Submission of the app was at 0.04, just after the planned launch day. Android submission tomorrow.
Tomorrow, and Friday are public holidays.
I'll have to work those, at best being able to not work on the weekend. The client has already told me he's calling me tomorrow morning to talk about things.
I don't want praise, but I'd like him to respect that while I may just be a lowly developer, I would like to have a life.
When are the happy times coming? -
That feeling when you get a call about your Android COSU app release being shit, because the positioning does not work at all.
- are the Sim cards activated? -> ofcourse I did, do you think I'm stupid?!?
- did you enabled data? -> what? gps doesn't need data!
-RTFM
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i am feeling angry and frustrated. not sure if it's a person ,or codebase or this bloody job. i have been into the company for 8 months and i feel like someone taking a lot of load while not getting enough team support to do it or any appreciation if i do it right.
i am not a senior by designation, but i do think my manager and my seniors have got their work easy when they see my work . like for eg, if on first release, they told me that i have to update unit tests and documentation, then on every subsequent release i did them by default and mentioning that with a small tick .
but they sure as hell don't make my work easy for me. their codebase is shitty and they don't give me KT, rather expect me to read everything on my own, understand on my own and then do everything on my own, then raise a pr , then merge that pr (once reviewed) , then create a release, then update the docs and finally publish the release and send the notification to the team
well fine, as a beginner dev, i think that's a good exercise, but if not in the coding step, their intervention would be needed in other steps like reviewing merging and releasing. but for those steps they again cause unnecessary delay. my senior is so shitty guy, he will just reply to any of my message after 2-3 hours
and his pr review process is also frustrating. he will keep me on call while reviewing each and every file of my pr and then suggest changes. that's good i guess, but why tf do you need to suggest something every fucking time? if i am doing such a shitty coding that you want me to redo some approach that i thought was correct , why don't you intervene beforehand? when i was messaging you for advice and when you ignored me for 3 hours? another eg : check my comment on root's rant https://devrant.com/rants/5845126/ (am talking about my tl there but he's also similar)
the tasks they give are also very frustrating. i am an android dev by profession, my previous company was a b2c edtech app that used kotlin, java11, a proper hierarchy and other latest Android advancements.
this company's main Android product is a java sdk that other android apps uses. the java code is verbose , repetitive and with a messed up architecture. for one api, the client is able to attach a listener to some service that is 4 layers down the hierarchy , while got other api, the client provides a listener which is kept as a weak reference while internal listeners come back with the values and update this weak reference . neither my team lead nor my seniors have been able to answer about logic for seperation among various files/classes/internal classes and unnecessary division of code makes me puke.
so by now you might have an idea of my situation: ugly codebase, unavailable/ignorant codeowners (my sr and TL) and tight deadlines.
but i haven't told you about the tasks, coz they get even more shittier
- in addition to adding features/ maintaining this horrible codebase , i would sometimes get task to fix queries by client . note that we have tons of customer representatives that would easily get those stupid queries resolced if they did their job correctly
- we also have hybrid and 3rd party sdks like react, flutter etc in total 7 hybrid sdks which uses this Android library as a dependency and have a wrapper written on its public facing apis in an equally horrible code style. that i have to maintain. i did not got much time/kt to learn these techs, but once my sr. half heartedly explained the code and now every thing about those awful sdls is my responsibility. thank god they don't give me the ios and web SDK too
- the worst is the shitty user side docs. I don't know what shit is going there, but we got like 4 people in the docs team and they are supposed to maintain the documentation of sdk, client side. however they have rasied 20 tickets about 20 pages for me to add more stuff there. like what are you guys supposed to do? we create the changelog, release notes , comments in pr , comments in codebase , test cases, test scenarios, fucking working sample apps and their code bases... then why tf are we supposed to do the documentation on an html based website too?? can't you just have a basic knowledge of running the sample, reading the docs and understand what is going around? do i need to be a master of english too in addition to being a frustrated coder?
just.... fml -
it seems currently in android studio , it can't differentiate between file extension. That's why it's giving duplicate resource error during app release build , while both files extension are different.1
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Android 13 will Unlock Certain Device Controls even when Locked
Android 13 is the newest operating system that will be available soon. The OS comes with a range of new features, one of which is unlocking certain device controls even when the device is locked. This is a game-changer that will significantly enhance the user experience.
Introduction
The Android operating system has undergone numerous changes since its inception. With every new release, users are treated to new features that enhance the overall user experience. Android 13 is no different, and it promises to revolutionize the way we interact with our devices. One of the most exciting features of Android 13 is unlocking certain device controls even when the device is locked. In this article, we'll take a closer look at this feature and explore its implications for users.
What is Android 13?
Before we delve into the details of Android 13, let's take a moment to understand what it is. Android is an operating system designed primarily for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It was developed by Google and is currently the most widely used mobile operating system in the world. Android 13 is the latest version of this operating system, and it comes with a range of new features that will make it even more user-friendly.
Device Control Access
One of the most exciting features of Android 13 is the ability to access certain device controls even when the device is locked. This means that users will be able to control various functions of their device without having to unlock it. Some of the controls that will be accessible include the flashlight, camera, and voice assistant.
How will it work?
The process of accessing device controls when the device is locked will be straightforward. Users will only need to swipe left on the lock screen to access a new panel that will display the controls. The controls will be easy to use, and users will be able to activate or deactivate them with a single tap. This feature will make it easier for users to perform certain tasks without having to unlock their device.
Implications for Users
The ability to access certain device controls when the device is locked will have several implications for users. Firstly, it will make it easier for users to perform certain tasks quickly. For example, if you need to use the flashlight, you won't have to go through the process of unlocking your device and navigating to the flashlight app. Instead, you can simply access the flashlight control from the lock screen.
Secondly, this feature will enhance the security of the device. By limiting access to certain controls, users can ensure that their device remains secure even when it is locked. For example, the camera control will only be accessible when the device is unlocked, which will prevent unauthorized users from taking pictures or videos.
Other Features of Android 13
Apart from the device control access feature, Android 13 comes with several other exciting features. These include:
Improved Privacy Controls
Android 13 comes with improved privacy controls that give users more control over their data. Users will be able to decide which apps have access to their location, contacts, and other sensitive data.
Enhanced Multitasking
Multitasking has always been a key feature of Android, and Android 13 takes it to the next level. Users will be able to view multiple apps at the same time, making it easier to switch between them.
New Messaging Features
Android 13 comes with new messaging features that will make it easier for users to communicate with their friends and family. These include the ability to react to messages with emojis and the ability to schedule messages.
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