So summer is officially in full swing in the northern hemisphere! What to do, what to do? Well, right now I’m on a work term at Communitech developing web and mobile applications. Recently, I’ve built applications using Flex and Ruby on Rails. I’m learning a lot and I’m loving it! In my free time, I’ve been playing around with code and doing some freelance projects. What are your plans this summer? Here are my recommendations:
I know it’s a little late to sign-up, but the Google Summer of Code is a great way to contribute to open source software. Students are matched with mentors to learn what it takes to apply skills to real-world applications and environments.
If you always wanted to develop applications and plugins for your favourite browser, why not try it? Firefox, my browser of choice, has a splendid developer community with tutorials that will help you publish an app on the marketplace. There is also Safari Dev Center and Chrome DevTools for you Safari and Chrome lovers. As for IE, do people develop still develop for that browser?
And of course, there is mobile development! Whether you like Android, iOS, Windows, or BlackBerry (Waterloo pride?), there are tons of resources on the web to get you started or help you debug and optimize your app. If you don’t want to simply be an Android developer, for instance, and don’t have time to learn all the ins and outs of the other platforms, I suggest using a cross-platform mobile development framework. In the past, I’ve tried PhoneGap and Flex (look out for a future review on Flex).
More of a software developer than a web or mobile one? Try developing in Qt, a cross-platform application framework for Windows, OS X, and Linux. If you start to miss mobile development, you can also do mobile development for BlackBerry, iOS, and Android.
What are you going to try? Have a great summer!
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