On React Native and other 3rd Party Mobile Frameworks

A couple days ago, Facebook released their React Native library to what seems like large fan-fare.  There have been many of these frameworks released over the years, Three20, RubyMotion, etc.  The main purpose they seem to serve is to lower the bar for developers to get into mobile.  That's a great thing, there's a fairly high learning curve to beginning Android or iOS.

If you are going to maintain a production application for any meaningful length of time, I've found using these to be a major hindrance.  In the last five years, mobile has evolved considerably.  Android and iOS have had multiple design overhauls.  Through this, the SDK components have remained relatively stable though.   UITableView and ListView have changed very little since the first OS versions and are still the cornerstone of most interfaces.  NSURLConnection and HttpURLConnection have continued to be consistent and reliable.  Apple and Google have maintained compatibility of most API's while also improving the performance and functionality.

On the other hand, nearly every 3rd party library I've worked with has broken compatibility with earlier versions.  It's great to be able to get up and running fast, but it's huge hinderance to maintain.  Long migration guides are a pain.  Sometimes libraries get completely deprecated.  Even with a careful integration of dependencies, it's very difficult to remove a library that your app relies heavily on.

If you're looking to get started with mobile or build a hobby app, these tools are great to get you up in running.  If you want to support something long-term, stick with the SDK as much as possible.

NCAA Football Rankings Algorithm

Released a NCAA football rankings algorithm today.  It's pretty simple, but remarkably effective and unbiased.  You can read more about it on Github.

New Website Launched

Threw up a new site today that posts information about developers.  Right now, you can only find people by programming language, but I'll add location too.  Designs really a disaster at the moment, maybe I'll fix that.

Find ya some devs

Google Analytics April Fools

Seems the International Space Station has been surfing all my sites today :)  The bubble moves around to wherever the station is orbiting at the moment.  You can see it in the Real-Time overview (https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en&pli=1#realtime/rt-overview)

A Response to a Complaint by Bitcoin Socially

The owner of Bitcoin Socially has complained about this page on one of my websites.  Here's his email:

You did not ask to use our images nor to post our email address on badappreviews.com/apps/150044

You will be given 10 days to take down our content or our lawyers will attempt to have the entire site taken down via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. We will also file a suit for the illegally used content.

Please take this matter seriously,

Bitcoin Socially

Since his email server appears not to be functioning and I can't reply to him, I've decided to post my response here.

To start, I find it highly unlikely that I've violated any of your copyrights.  Email addresses are likely not copyrightable.  According to the US Copyright Office, "Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."  An email address appears to me to be a fact, just simply an address at which someone can be contacted.  Regardless, I've written to them regarding the matter and should hear back next week.

My use of your images seems to be protected based on the decision in Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com.  According to this decsion, "the owner of a computer that does not store and serve the electronic information to a user is not displaying that information, even if such owner in-line links to or frames the electronic information."  This is exactly the case on my website.  My servers neither store nor serve these images, I simply provide browser instructions to display images Bitcoin Socially has made publicly available.

Update:

The US Copyright Office got back to me.  As I expected, you cannot copyright an email address.

Bad App Reviews Now Has iOS Apps

Bad App Reviews, now has iOS apps.  We've got about 90k of them listed now, but we're still filling in reviews.  About 5k apps have reviews right now, adding at a rate of 3k apps/day.  You can see them under the search or index, right along side their Android counterparts.

Mashable's HTML Intro

Noticed this ASCII art at the top of Mashable's HTML today.  Seems it gets sent for every page on their site.



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~_,-| |  | | (_| \__ \ | | | (_| | |_) | |  __/    |   /\_/\
    |_|  |_|\__,_|___/_| |_|\__,_|_.__/|_|\___|  ~=|__( ^ .^)
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