Show HN: My first app – The minimalist distance-based transit alarm | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first app – The minimalist distance-based transit alarm

67 pointsJaberer35 comments

Hi all!

I'm a 17-year old self-taught developer just starting to tap into the mobile world! :3

This summer, I've worked on a minimalist distance-based alarm clock app that wakes you up before you miss your stop!

Check it out here! http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/commuter-buddy/cb9b5107-41e0-4d2b-b0d6-110fe555fc3b

Feedback and comments are welcome, thanks :)

I am quite ignorant when it comes to Windows Phone development, mainly because it never took off how Microsoft wanted it too.

Would you mind sharing the tools and technologies used to develop your app? If not here then a blog post would be fantastic, describing the process from start to end, issues you had with the tools/processes, etc.

One small bit of feedback on the UI, make the background for the "Type or tap destination" text entry field darker, it looks kind of messy at the moment as the background information is too visible.

Professional Windows Phone developer here.

Here are the tools/processes usually used in WP8 app development:

IDE: Visual Studio Language: C# or F# UI: XAML (WPF) and Visual Designer Deployment: Windows Phone simulator (really good) or Device Architecture: MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) with Two-Binding

If you do it right, you should be able to reuse 80-90% of the code in a Windows 8 app. With Xamarin, you can reuse 50-75% of the code on iOS and Android (depends if the app is UI-heavy or not).

I worked with native iOS (Xcode and Objective-C), native Android (Eclipse/Android Studio and Java), and Windows Phone. Microsoft has, by far, the best tools which makes building a Windows Phone app quicker than doing the same on any of the other two platforms. iOS is the second-best, and Android is the worst. Xamarin makes things a little better.

Thank you for such a detailed reply!

Thanks for your comment! Yup, I used VS2012 in C# and XAML

Definitely got a lot of feedback from my friends to get it on iOS and Android. Haha, and yeah, Android Studio is quite the hassle compared to Visual Studio, but will definitely get through it :)

Thanks for your feedback! Yeah, I wanted to have it "Type or tap", but I couldn't get the search feature to work quite correctly. The Search Query can't handle too vague, yet vital searches (ie. Jefferson St) or it simply returns null :( Definitely a priority upgrade at the moment!

Don't worry too much about what platform you initially develop your app for -- if you can validate your concept then it shouldn't be hard to find assistance porting it to other platforms.

Too many people get tied up on "what platform should I develop for?" when they could be spending that time getting an MVP up on _something_, validating it and getting the ball moving.

I believe he made the right decision in starting with Windows Phone. Not only is it easier to build an app on this platform, but once he validate the idea, he can easily port the app to iOS and Android with Xamarin and share at least 50% of his code with all platforms. The opposite (porting an iOS/Android app to Windows Phone) is much less trivial.

Lol, I didn't do much thinking into which device to start with I'll take a look into Xamarin, I actually never heard of it before. Thanks for your advice!

Haha, thanks!

I just happen to own a Windows Phone, and commuted a lot, while in the process, missed quite a few stops due to tiredness and overall school stress.

It looks cool! Well done! :)

As others have commented, in my opinion Windows Phone will have a negligible influence on the mobile market going forward. I think it would be a much better investment of your time to start developing on either iOS/Android (or both!) as early as possible.

Good luck!

The future of Windows Phone is solely dependent on how Microsoft executes its universal app strategy. If they successfully launch a way of running the same app on Windows (desktop/laptop), Phone and Tablet (non-x86) then it may be able to come back from the dead.

Unfortunately Microsoft have almost no experience at doing such a thing, they have always lived in their [big] Windows eco-system bubble and that may very well be the thing that stops Windows Phone, Windows Tablet's etc from ever becoming a real player in the market.

The next year is going to be critical to Microsoft's long term success as a platform provider outside of PCs.

It is currently possible to share 90% of the code between a Windows Phone and a Windows 8 app. Heck, it is even possible to write the UI of an app once and make it work on both platforms. The binaries are now the same on Windows Phone and Windows 8 (I think you can submit a single one for both apps), and universal apps are already a thing (you can buy it once and get the app on Windows 8 and Windows Phone).

It's a matter of time before people realize they can use Xamarin to port a Windows app to iOS/Android in a matter of days.

All this craze of Xamarin, I really need to check it out haha

Thanks for your advice!

Already starting on Android devices :)

Windows phone development isn't all that bad. For starters there isn't as much competition as Android/iOS, so the chance to become the defacto app in your category is greater. And being a big fish in a small pond can work just as well as the opposite.

I completely agree. I've also found that the relatively few users of windows phone tend to be more passionate about supporting developers on their platform, so it's much easier to get attention for good applications from the windows phone subreddit and windows phone dedicated new sites. Obviously this is due to there being fewer WP developers in the first place, but it's easy enough to take advantage of nowadays.

>> I'm a 17-year old self-taught developer just starting to tap into the mobile world! :3

Great idea indeed, wish I could try.

To tap into the mobile world, it could be better if you'd target the 95% user base (iPhone or Android). Unfortunately Windows Phone sells less than 3% globally in Q2 and going forward, the prospects for Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Phone look darker. Even newer more exotic options such as Jolla, FirefoxOS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch don't seem to have prospects for much bigger market share.

But impressive idea, again.

In some markets, WP has over 10% market share. It's absolutely true that globally the share is much less but it isn't a small number of deployed units in absolute terms.

From what I have seen, Windows Phone has way over 10% market share amongst Microsoft employees.

Thanks for the advice!

I just happen to have a WP, and like C# the most :) Already working on an Android version as many of my friends have told me :)

Jaberer, I wouldn't worry so much about the platform either. If there comes a time where you want to make an iOS/Android version, you can always try out Xamarin, which lets you use Visual Studio and C# to generate Android and iOS apps with relatively little extra effort.

I'm not related to Xamarin in any way, I'm just a fan of their cross platform mobile development solution. I'm also a student, and their academic license is only $99/year (though it will get expensive when we graduate).

Hi, have you used Kivy? I code in Python and have always wanted to build mobile applications. Do you think it is good?

I wish more people your age would teach themselves something like this in the summer. I remember tearing down and rebuilding computers and teaching myself Linux in the summers when I was your age. I wouldn't have picked up those skills in school otherwise.

Keep up the good work, passion and initiative like this will take you far.

Thank you so much for your support!

Yeah, I don't have too much time or resources for learning CS, and gotta scrap as much I can during the summer breaks :)

Nice App! Like the minimalistic interface, but you should work on spacing, font-size, colors etc. they need to be polished. Also toggle button should change state, irrespective of touch point.

Don't worry about Windows Phone, it's good for starting out, very polished tools and APIs.

Thanks for your comments!

Yeah, definitely not a finished product; many updates incoming !

Nice work! FYI I did quite the same app for BlackBerry 10 a while ago.

link: https://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/51602887

Good luck!

Cool!

I think everyone needs a transit alarm :)

Wow! Thanks for all of your comments! I am abashed by the positive feedback, thanks again!

Great idea!

Thanks!

From the HN guidelines: "Don't abuse the text field in the submission form to add commentary to links. The text field is for starting discussions. If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead."

It's not a commentary, OP is simply introducing her/himself.

Hehe :)

Oh whoops,

I'm new on HN, did I do something wrong? :o

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