After a few months of code-doodling the Good Turn that I developed way back in 2010 on iOS is now available on Android! The app is a complete rewrite in Java using Google Firebase for the data back-end. This version has actually been in development since 2010 after the iOS version was released, I just never got it to a state where I felt it was releasable until now.

This release is a complete rewrite in Swift. There were a number of changes to make this happen but it’s all (mostly) behind the scenes. The one change was adding the ability to share turns using iOS sharing sheets to facebook, twitter, etc..

It’s really easy to start writing code and it’s really fun. I mean REALLY fun. I develop a sort of hyper-focus once the editor opens and somewhere after the second or third compilation attempt. The warnings and errors from typos in my code scroll by on the screen. I fix them, I think on the problem a little more, I adjust the approach, refactor, reorganize. A few comments here to remind myself what my architecture is, sprinkle in some sample inputs and outputs like fairy dust to attract a correct solution. I’m in heaven, angels are singing, kittens are being born.

In working with students and colleagues on good development practices, and generally keeping my own skills and knowledge up-to-date, I’ve been doing more reading on continuious integration. Below are some highlights and key ideas I pulled from reading Martin Fowler’s article on Continuous Integration.

Today version 1.1 of the Portland Women’s History Trail went live in the Apple AppStore, the Google play, and on the web.

There are a number of quirky tasks to complete when you get ready to publish an app in either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. They are not the type of thing I, as a developer, usually think about when starting a project. As the Portland Women’s History Trail gets nearer to “submission ready,” I’ve steadily chopped away at that list, but the first major task was making a fundamentally HTML/CSS/JavaScript application work when bundled and offline took a bit of research and ultimately, doing things the “right way.”

I found reference to this great poem while reading Michelle Malkin’s Who Built That: Awe Inspiring Storeis of American Tinkerpreneurs.