

How to build a great mobile development team - mjdipietro
http://areallybadidea.com/how-to-build-a-great-mobile-development-team

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imack
It never ceases to amaze me how companies will spend months trying to find
someone with skills that take weeks to learn.

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bjelkeman-again
It may take weeks to learn for the right person. But I doubt the right person
is available. Do you know any really good developer who isn't really busy?

~~~
KevinMS
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman>

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zmmmmm
One thing that frustrates me is the new 'mobile developer' role that seems to
have emerged. Rather than having two separate people - an iOS specialist and
an Android specialist, companies will hire a 'mobile developer' as if Android
and iOS have a lot in common with each other. They would never hire someone
who had only Objective-C experience to code a Java app, but they will happily
throw an iOS developer at an Android app.

What it means is you typically get someone who knows very little about Android
putting out utter crap. I think this is one of the reasons why the Android
Market has suffered from such low quality, even in apps from major companies.

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justin
Agreed. We don't consider Android and iOS programmers interchangable (except
in so far as we consider all programmers at JTV to largely be generalists who
can work on whatever they put their minds to). Android and iPhone are
different platforms with their own gotchas that just happen to share some form
factors and styles of interface elements. When we do product design we design
for each separately.

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jp
WebOS/Bada/Android(Linux), WindowsPhone(CE) and iOS(Mach) are all very
different. Each platform uses its own string class, threading logic and UI
layer. The lack of standardization is almost bizarre when you factor in HTML5.
This results in lots of developers sitting on the fence.

Five platforms, five compilers, five api´s... yet everything runs on 32bit
ARM, uses ANSI/ISO C-like syntax and reads UTF8 over HTTP.

I tried writing something that was multiplatform with HybridKit and it was
almost impossible. Even stupid code generation might be too much. So solid
design and custom code seems like a safe bet.

~~~
zmmmmm
> The lack of standardization is almost bizarre when you factor in HTML5

I have a feeling we'll one day look a back on this period as a time of mass
insanity when just as we nearly attained the dream of a cross platform stack
that could run and work well anywhere we all enthusiastically threw it away
and enslaved ourselves to the horror of splintered, incompatible technologies.

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barista
tl;dr: hire talented engineers with strong programming backgrounds and let
them work on areas of the company they are interested in, regardless of domain
experience.

Totally agree. This almost always works.

