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andreamazz

101 karma · joined July 9, 2014

Cofounder and developer at fancypixel.it I'm mainly an iOS developer, but I like to play around with Rails and messing around with Sketch. http://whoisandrea.me/
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andreamazz··on Writing for Half-Life
Obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt0w9YP_wZ0
andreamazz··on Writing for Half-Life
> On an unrelated side-note, if you've played Half-Life, Freeman's Mind is a must-watch: it's an astoundingly funny bit of comedy that is just so brilliant.

True. Also I just learned that he actually finished the whole game. I used to follow this series as he was producing it, and I thought he gave up halfway through.

andreamazz··on Our First 50,000 Stars
Currently I found peace of mind with react+redux. Once you find a stable and well configured boilerplate (Redux slingshot for me), it's smooth sailing.
andreamazz··on Introducing unlimited private repositories
As much as I would love to switch to GitHub for our private repos, it still is way more expensive than BitBucket.
andreamazz··on BMW, Audi and Toyota cars can be unlocked and started with hacked radios
This kinda defeats the convenience of this kind of key free systems though.
andreamazz··on React v15.0 Release Candidate
I'm pretty happy with the changes that tone down the DOM pollution. The versioning is a little odd though.
andreamazz··on Transmission BitTorrent app contained malware
The guys at Bohemian coding discussed (even if not too in detail) it here: http://blog.sketchapp.com/post/134322691555/leaving-the-mac-...
andreamazz··on A Linux-powered microwave oven
Lucky you. My samsung oven has something like 20 buttons with cryptic icons. Feels like an old VHS remote control.
andreamazz··on Lessons I learned while creating my SaaS with Rails
Way faster. We are using a rails API and a React+Flux app as a front end. The whole setup time alone is a considerable pain. I feel that the JS tooling is still too fragmented and sometimes messy, but I'm probably biased by years of rails and iOS development. Writing the app takes more time since you need to write everything from the ground up (e.g.: no Devise views to just style and forget), but I really hope that in the future the investment will pay. I wrote about it a while ago (although now we are using the more terse Alt implementation): http://fancypixel.github.io/blog/2015/01/28/react-plus-flux-...
andreamazz··on $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups
That would be great. Any idea on how effort is required for an incubator to become affiliated? My incubator is a university, so they move their butt at a painfully slow rate.
andreamazz··on $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups
I share your feeling. We are running our cloud platform on AWS, and it's hard to offer competitive prices when you are not founded and the AWS bills kick your ass. We are in an university incubator that gives us the office space (we pay a 'friendly' rent) and that's it. I realize it's a petty feeling, but...
andreamazz··on Next Generation Eclipse IDE
Yeah, the "meticulous design" made me chuckle. And they put it as the first selling point. "barely controlled mess" would fit better.
andreamazz··on Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps
What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version, the IDE suggests what is available or not.

The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target.

The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions, accordingly to the new tech introduced, and most of them are dictated by common sense. If something goes awry the review team is available to discuss with you. Good luck getting an Android app reinstated if it is taken down.

The certificates are a pain in the ass, no way around that, but the rest of the platform makes up for this, the tools and language(s) are way easier to use.

andreamazz··on Criticisms of Angular
We're pretty happy with React+alt. The development is streamlined and easy to understand.
andreamazz··on Apple tvOS UI Kit for Sketch
Exactly. I'm a developer, but I try my hand desingning most of my apps. Sketch replaced Illustrator and in part Photoshop. I do all my vector graphics with it, from mockups to production assets. It's fast, easy to use and made by a small brilliant team. [Shameless plug]: I've been designing an icon every day with it: https://github.com/andreamazz/one-icon-a-day
andreamazz··on Apple tvOS UI Kit for Sketch
Worth every penny.
andreamazz··on React Native for Android
Getting started is one thing, completing a product is another. It's not an uncommon metric to apply a 1.5x or 2x multiplier to the development time of an iOS app to obtain the time to develop the Android one. I would also argue that from the same starting point (no java experience and no Swift experience) the learning curve is way smoother on iOS, with more fine tuned APIs and better tools (interface builder can be picked up easily by a designer with no coding background).
andreamazz··on Why Is Europe Failing to Create More $1B Startups?
Luckily no, organized crime is spread mostly on other regions, and as far as I know it doesn't seem involved in the ICT field. At least I hope :)
andreamazz··on Why Is Europe Failing to Create More $1B Startups?
Yeah, the problem is that with this line of reasoning a startup is destined to fail. If I don't get clients, I can't keep my business open. That's what irks me. How can I prove myself in the market if I don't get a chance?
andreamazz··on React Native for Android
iOS development will always be native for me, the tools are not perfect, but they feel right, I can get stuff done in no time. Android on the other hand... I can't express how much I loathe the tools and language. So much that I stopped caring. React native might be an alternative.
andreamazz··on React Native for Android
That, and because development is way easier.
andreamazz··on Why Is Europe Failing to Create More $1B Startups?
As far as gadget goes, "newer is better" is a dominant factor in Europe too. The problem lays in the enterprise world. One time a client told me "you call this Visual Basic application old, but it's not. It's consolidated". Can't argue with that logic. As for the second point, you're right on the money. I can't count the amount of engineers that make less than 25/30k€ here.
andreamazz··on Why Is Europe Failing to Create More $1B Startups?
Unicorns? Ha! It's hard to survive, let alone be successful. No investors, convoluted laws, high taxes and complete lack of startup mentality. I'm a cofounder of an italian startup, and the road is on an unbearably steep slope. The bureaucracy is insane, the cost of running a small business is daunting. Other companies refuse to work with you because in their eyes you're a scrub (I heard so many times bullshit like "I don't know if you'll be alive in a year or two, so I can't adopt your technology"). You can't hire someone else because you simply can't afford it, and the best people go to the USA anyway. It's immensely frustrating, the only thing that keeps us going is passion, but passion won't pay the bills. Before talking about unicorns we should talk about creating an healthier business environment.
andreamazz··on Relay: Declarative data for React applications
Yeah, I wanted to try Relay for a small project a month ago, but getting started seems really time consuming, and the documentation was pretty poor, with just a contrived sample. The architecture seems great, I hope they improve the doc now that it's out of the tech preview.
andreamazz··on Apple Unveils the iPad Pro
Then people started buying 3rd party crappy stylus, because drawing with just your finger is hard. If there's demand, it would be stupid not offering a solution. The stylus is an optional, not included nor needed for the iPad Pro. People are under the impression that what Jobs said to sell his ideas at the time should be an unbreakable company law, but that would be idiotic.
andreamazz··on Flexbox in 5 minutes
It's meant to be used alongside the grid system of bootstrap/foundation/pure/etc... As a rule of thumb: grid system for the general positioning in the page, flexbox to align the items of the block.
andreamazz··on Hack: A typeface designed for source code
Yes, Menlo is my go-to font, I use it in the terminal and with Xcode. Always had.
andreamazz··on Amazon Sign Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May
Hope they can also bring over the production values and the photography of BBC's TG.
andreamazz··on Redesigning Chrome Android. Part 1 of 2
For me the Chrome tabs merged with the app is one of the most confusing UI choices I have ever witnessed. Glad to hear that it can be switched off though.
andreamazz··on Scripting in Swift
Oh, I just reached the point where Ayaka talks about Carthage. That's a pretty straightforward solution, nice.
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