I've tried out iOS development using a few different approaches over the years. Having previous experience with Ruby and finding the prospect of learning Objective-C not particularly attractive, I tried RubyMotion back in 2013. RubyMotion was a pretty cool take on things, Laurent Sansonetti did a great job of making RubyMotion feel familiar to a Ruby developer. But the problem for me was not so much anything specifically to do with RubyMotion so much as the fact that I had no previous experience with native iOS development. These cross-platform/cross-language tools are a lot easier to use if you have a fair amount of experience with the original platform/language that they are trying to be a bridge to. But if you do have such experience, then it begs the question why would you need a cross-platform/cross-language tool? It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. How much familiarity with the original platform/language is enough?
A little while back I read a post by DHH wherein he lays out his reasons for why we should be more omnivorous with our browser use, lest we end up back in a new version of the bad old days when Internet Explorer was the only show in town, holding back the progress of the open web. For some time now and like seemingly most people these days, my main browser has been Google's Chrome but David's post struck a chord with me and so - being on MacOS - the obvious alternative to Chrome that I could use is Safari. This is my experience of a long time Chrome user giving Safari an earnest go.
If you've spent any time working in IT within or around the Australian Government, you've probably heard about the Digital Service Standard , administered by the Australian Government's Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) . But what does the Digital Service Standard really mean for those who work in/around government today?
It's sad but true that my last blog post here was more than a year ago, how time flies. But, I'm not dead ( as Pink once said ) and I finally have some time to write an update to my previous post - or another instalment of a perennial favourite post topic of mine: where and how is my blog hosted now?!
Some months ago, I finally got around to redesigning my blog with responsiveness in mind, along with switching it to run on a new blogging app and hosting platform. Previous to this, I had been using the excellent Enki blogging app (which I still remain quite fond of, assisting with maintaining the project on occasion) and Heroku . This combination resulted in a free hosting situation with some limitations which I was generally quite happy with. But while Enki is a great little Rails app, especially if you’re the kind of person that likes to be able to blog from any place where you have a web browser and an Internet connection, I felt like I needed a simpler platform. Something where I can worry less about config and maintenance, something that just lets me write my content and stays out of the way. And while Heroku is one of the most developer friendly hosting platforms I have ever used, I was hoping to find something at about the same ongoing price point (say, $0) without the caveats of Heroku’s free plan.
