Mobile Development Forrester-Wave Report (PDF)

Interesting resource recently shared with me (PDF) evaluating mobile development platforms, Q4 2016:

• forrester-wave-mobile-development.pdf

And "The Forrester Wave™: Mobile Infrastructure Services, Q3 2015 - Ten Providers That Matter And How They Stack Up", can be downloaded here:

• http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES119902

PS. Kudos to Mr. A, Martinho for sharing.

The 15 meeting etiquette rules every software engineer shall know...

Well, in fact this is the compilation of 15 rules everyone should abide for in every meeting. After all we all want to appear professional don't we?

http://www.businessinsider.com/meeting-rules-every-professional-should-know-2016-11 

BOOKS: Top mentioned books on stackoverflow.com

Interesting list to find your possible next read (amongst the ones that are on your technical area and that you have never heard of). Also interesting is the description of the "simple" process that was used to create this valuable list (turning Stackoverflow usage data into a highly valuable list of most likely interesting books on development issues is one interesting example of turning information into valuable knowledge):

Top mentioned books on stackoverflow.com
Quoting:
"We analysed more than 40 000 000 questions and answers on stackoverflow.com to bring you the top of most mentioned books (5720 in total). How we did it: We got database dump of all user-contributed content on the Stack Exchange network (can be downloaded here); Extracted questions and answers made on stackoverflow; Found all amazon.com links and counted it; Created tag-based search for your convenience; Brought it to you"

Do you know them all? I have at least 4 of them at less than 1 meter of me. And you, how do you rank on this?

PS. Kudos to J. Machado for pointing this out.

TOOL: Come on, be a Git!

(no offense intended, and if you're offended, talk to Linus, who thinks he's a funny guy)
So, in order to interact with a Version Control System that someone called Git you have many options. Here are the 3 most common ones:

• Git command line client: https://git-scm.com/ - for command line lovers
• TortoiseGit: https://tortoisegit.org/ - for Project Managers and other "higher level" users

As a 3rd option: Sourcetree is a good client for developers with branching and merging needs (there are setups that require user Atlassian accounts, and others that will not require it): 
Go to the Atlassian web site for the most up to date versions (Atlassian is the company behind JIRA).

SW Construction: Typescript update

Typescript is JavaScript with "enhancements" (that attempts to avoid some JS "traps") from MS and there's a new Release Candidate available:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/02/02/announcing-typescript-2-2-rc/

SW Development: Cross-platform development using Apache Cordova (HTML5, CSS3, JS)?

Cross-platform development using Apache Cordova (previously known as Phonegap)?

• Architectural overview of Cordova platform - Apache Cordova

Quoting:
"Apache Cordova is an open-source mobile development framework. It allows you to use standard web technologies - HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's capabilities such as sensors, data, network status, etc.

Use Apache Cordova if you are:
- a mobile developer and want to extend an application across more than one platform, without having to re-implement it with each platform's language and tool set.
- a web developer and want to deploy a web app that's packaged for distribution in various app store portals.
- a mobile developer interested in mixing native application components with a WebView (special browser window) that can access device-level APIs, or if you want to develop a plugin interface between native and WebView components."

Start here: Your first app.
Wikipedia article is here.

SW Development: Plugin based development - Apache Cordova

Q: What is a Cordova plugin?
A: A plugin is a bit of add-on code that provides JavaScript interface to native components. They allow your app to use native device capabilities beyond what is available to pure web apps.

• Plugin Search - Apache Cordova
• https://cordova.apache.org/plugins/faq.html
• [npm is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js]

Cordova plugins are being used for instance by Outsystems Now (native web apps) to extend functionality of the mobile apps.
Example of plugins can be seen in the first link (Plugin Search).