This year, I had an opportunity to work on a few exciting new projects using a huge set of technologies which made my work much more enjoyable. During the recent years, I was focused on making Android apps because focusing on a single thing makes a lot of sense when you have a full time job with a specific, clearly defined scope. You have to be the guy who knows the most about a single thing, especially if you work in a small team, which I prefer.

This year was different becase I’ve been busy with a few relatively small projects, some are for hire and others are personal. Isn’t it one of the joys of remote work to be able to do many things and never get bored? As a remote workforce, we’re more in control, we can pick contracts of any length or a tech stack so why limit our choice to something too specific? It was a bit scary at first but, leveraging my old connections, I was able to get a few contracts that require some skills I didn’t have, and I’ve been able to complete them without any problems. That was a nice and challenging experience, couldn’t recommend it more.

Easy Portfolio

Easy Portfolio is my new side project that I started with a friend of mine this summer. As usual, it all started from my rants caused by me not being able to find a decent asset tracking app that doesn’t use any dark patterns and that also respects user’s privacy. Not a lot of things to ask, actually, so we’ve decided to make our own app and offer it to people who might have similar requirements.

The problem is, having an Android app is not enough, so I’ve been busy learning how to set up an infrastructure for our new project, how to make modern websites and so on. Plenty of new things to learn, but I’m satisfied with our progress so far.

Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator that I’ve been using for this blog and a few other websites. It’s probably the best thing that happened to web front-ends, ever: it’s fast, it’s flexible, and it’s pleasure to work with. I just can’t imagine going back to WordPress or any managed CMS, they seem like dinosaurs. Did I mention that Hugo is open source?

Angular

I used Angular for one of the projects I was hired to do and it actually not as bad as I expected. One of the good things about Angular is the fact that it uses TypeScript instead of JavaScript. It’s also modular and testable, much more modular and testable than many Android app architectures.

Also, many web apps, including the apps built using Angular and ReactJS are not uncommon on desktop platforms nowadays. As you may guess, they have a huge overhead but desktops have plenty of computing power to spare, and I use a few of those web apps, and they work pretty well on my machines. Unfortunately, the idea that the web stack is a good choice for mobile is still in the air. I guess, it can make sense if you try to cut costs by all means necessary, and you can afford to compromise on user experience. Not that I have something against it, it reminds me of the times when PhoneGap was all the rage. Personally, I wouldn’t do such a thing, it just feels like a good old sabotage. There are plenty of ways to create mobile apps that your users won’t hate from the day one.re.