Right. Being aware of and being skilled enough to solve a current need in a way that makes sense. Of course, this requires actually knowing what's going on, talking to people, working on something people care about, doing a good job etc. Of course sometimes there are major problems that slap an organization in the face, but the real value is in getting ahead of those.

I think this is sometimes forgotten but I also think it's the case that larger companies do, in fact, have a better story around a technical track.

Startups: let's say, fewer than 50 or so developers and nothing really matters (organization is flat, flexible, etc.); formal structure is less critical. I think where it gets to be ~100+ where "figuring out the new org structure" becomes important and tends to reward being in management.

I wouldn't be comfortable recommending a specific option. React native I've heard more good things about than anything else, but it suffers from the problem all the others have in that once you get away from simply fetching data and displaying it, you get into territory where things aren't straightforward and you end up actively fighting the framework that was supposed to be making your life easier

Maybe so. I just know react in general requires a very high level of Javascript understanding - not just memorizing things but mastering concepts like binding scope and immutability. Whereas with other frameworks you can get by a little better with cookbooks and muddling through. And react native is a more complicated superset of react.

It wouldn't be my recommendation for someone who's just looking for something like x-code where you can almost drag and drop an application together. I don't know much about ruby but my perception is it's easier to pick up and crank out an app if you don't already have much Javascript.

If there really is nothing like a decent Android app creator (where say he could create 90% of the app then get help for the tricky parts) then I would just suggest bite the bullet and learn enough Java to get through the Android SDK.

Well it's not that there are a few top tier companies and everyone else is on an equal footing - you also have to deal with the LinkedIn/DropBox/Uber/Spotify, other large tech companies that are still very competitive and maybe non-tech companies that still offer competitive/lucrative career options, etc, etc. The companies that are ok with top 3% types as their top people on the technical track are probably not in the second tier, who do have lots of top 3% types among their seniors and would ideally want more extraordinary people for the top of their technical ladder. I guess what I meant was more that if you hire the best possible people relative to who you are as a company, the assortative nature of hiring is going to ensure that the gap between your own internal top 1% and top 25% is going to be fairly small, unless you're very large and/or at/near the top-tier.

But I think this was a bad and unnecessary tangent - even conceding that this doesn't matter, empirically, even big tech companies only have use the top of the technical ladder for exceptional cases that are statistically unlikely at small companies. If you take Google and scale it down to, say, a 100-people company, the number of people on the technical ladder at or above director level would be ~0. So while I haven't had good experience with companies trying to use the technical ladder, I think my argument has more to do with how very few companies try to maintain any kind of equivalence between the management ladder and the technical ladder.

Since it's not actually necessary to maintain the technical ladder to retain such exceptional people - you can always just give them management titles and compensation but not management responsibilities, which is what investment banks do for top individual contributors, technical or otherwise - I do believe that much of this is about managing perception, internally and externally.

I don't really think React Native shares that much in common with regular react. I had kind of hoped that learning react would lead to a write-once run-anywhere, but, well, it didn't look that way. Granted, I did not try that hard with RN.

I also didn't think learning react was very hard - and I had zero JS experience going in. But, many years of programming experience, so, I dunno.

The main reason not to use React is that JS frameworks seem to have extremely short lifespans. Either they get dumped completely, or completely redone every 6 months without backwards compatibility. I feel like all the FE devs I know are constantly fighting a losing battle with keeping everything up-to-date.

I am also not a java programmer, but I was able to write a few simple android apps. IMO you don't really need to know that much about Java to do it, although, you will have to learn some of the suck that comes along with it (resources, property files, one-class-per-file, burying all your source code 9 directories deep for some reason, re-throwing all the exceptions, etc)

I wrote some android stuff in C++, with a JNI shim on top of it. That was because I had a fairly complicated algorithm that I wanted to work on desktops and phones, and I didn't want to write it in Java. I... wouldn't recommend this unless you're already a good C++ guy, because it's not easy.

Uh react and learning react is super simple. You don't need to know much about js either. Redux is another story.

Everyone bitches about redux but I also thought that was pretty straight forward

This line of reasoning also work for management (and probably also has a lot of truth to it there) and yet...

I agree that this is true, in part for many of the reasons you give (e.g. it probably doesn't make sense since no one is that great, it's hard to do well, and you can always make random exceptions in role for people you want to retain).

I'm not sure, offhand, which, if any, of the non-top5 tech companies have coherent/admired dual tracks.

What's unclear to me is the goal here - is this a hobbyist thing or do you have a specific thing you're hoping to accomplish? If so, are you planning on creating an app for both iOS and Android but somehow have the iOS part figured out, or do you only need to care about Android for some reason? If so, what would that reason be? What type of app would this be and what kinds of users and roughly how many are you hoping for?

Speaking of which I got a lot of the application working with MIT appinventor (http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/) which is drag and drop and had no problem accessing my phone's gps and accellerometer, but it didn't work on the next phone I tried and didn't work on a tablet and not having an endless supply of android devices to test compatibility on I was hoping something else would just work better.

Yeah RN makes a lot of sense if for whatever reason you or your devs are already familiar with React and/or otherwise learning React makes sense. If you're just doing mobile and are not committed to the JS ecosystem one way or another, it doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment, though it's possible that other options aren't that much better depending on your needs.

It's a multiplayer game and it's probably just a hobbyist thing and I have an android phone. I could potentially make it for iOS at someone point as we have an iphone in the family, but I'd have to pry it out of my daughter's hands.

In that case you may be better off with game frameworks/engines, though if your game is not at all graphical in nature, traditional application frameworks along the lines of what's been recommend may still make more sense. I don't have any direct experience with game frameworks but I've had friends who published games with Unity and another group that built something interesting with Phaser and they've all reported positive experience with their choice.

In before Microbet becomes the next unicorn.

Does it boil down to uncompiled Java code that you can inspect and modify, or does it go straight to compiled?

Thanks. That seems like the ticket. There are graphics. Unity and Phaser both look pretty good at first glance with lots of support online. If anyone else has any thoughts about which is better or something similar lmk please.

Btw if you have any home solar (or general solar) questions - Microbet is our resident expert.

Hm, I had the opposite experience - I learned a bit of React Native first, then React, and nearly all my RN experience carried over quite nicely into React.

jj,

Think that is ridiculous.

Suz,

I was being a tool. I was making a joke. I apologize regardless.

cb,

Nothing has changed. You barely have any concept of how major tech biz are run. Unless you want to redress the T8/L8 stupidity you engaged in?


all,

99% of "tech" companies are trivial problems. There is literally someone with $ figure who can un**** your trivial problem. If there isn't, ur ****ed.

_dave_,

Heard great thing bout that. Good tout. k.

cb,

k. Actually reread a lot of that with jj in context. Wao. Agree with a lot you say.

jj,

You think you anymore than a peon? If not, why aren't you paid as such?

Think you getting real crazy nao. But hey, if I had so few reports and was paid so little I'd look for validation.

This seems a bit silly. Could I say a python framework is bad because it requires me to understand some Python specific features/syntax/etc? That is what you're saying and its kinda silly.

No it's not what I'm saying. A framework like angular is much more about learning built-in components, general syntax and cookbooks. React from my experience requires a much deeper understanding of javascript concepts to do well.

React is very powerful if you have the right devs to run it. But I wouldn't throw it at a JS novice. Our offshore devs can work angular to a passable degree. But I'd be very worried about them with react.

Note: this is based on limited experience with react. But I've also gotten more or less the same opinion from devs I know who are much more experienced with it.

I get what you're saying. React is not very noob friendly. The argument that

just doesn't work for me.

Microbet is a noob just trying to create an app as a hobbyist. Therefore my gut feeling is to try to steer him toward something that doesn't require as much deep understanding of the language - which can only be attained over time and experience.

As far as people who know what they're doing - you play the hand you're dealt. Or try to change it as much as you can. Or eventually quit - like I am doing. But I could be back in a situation like that and I will just do my best to get the job done with the tools at my disposal.

Native Android is almost always the right answer for the standard app.
But for a game that relies on graphics, there are quite a few platforms. I guess I'd start with Unity and see if that worked.