Author: Matt

  • Polyglot vs Specialization

    I consider myself a fairly well rounded developer. So when it comes time to choose a technology to accomplish a task I will happily choose the one that is the best fit whether it requires Ruby, Python, Java, Objective-C, PHP, CSS, or Bash or anything else. Recently I was given a project to take on.…

  • Thoughts on Swift

    So for an iOS developer like myself Swift is pretty exciting. When a new language comes along, especially one that is sure to get traction, there is a lot of opportunity to create some exciting new things.  We all know that Swift will make inroads into the mac and iOS app scene, but as a…

  • What happens when computers are smarter than you

    A few years ago I was working at a finance company doing quantitative stock algorithms and I remember hearing an interesting story. Back in the early 2000’s there was some buzz around neural networks and their ability to be used to pick stocks.  The company at the time had invested some R&D into creating their…

  • Investing in your Productivity

    This week in discussion with the rest of my team it became apparent that there was a lack of investment in creating tools to help with the productivity of the team. There are four distinct areas you can focus on to improve your productivity as a software developer. Focus Software development requires a lot of time to…

  • Lessons from Consulting

    As a consultant you get the chance to work on lots of unique projects from the ground up and also to come in and fix up existing projects.  With an eye towards managing a budget, estimating your time, and  keeping active communication there are a lot of valuable lessons to learn. On the other hand…

  • Strategy Adjustment

    Despite my amazing singing, Birds can fly had a less than stellar first week in the store. Invader Crush essentially saw no downloads. It seems that there are just too many games in the store. It’s nearly impossible to get noticed with simple games (outside of pure luck).  I thought that the laughable graphics and…

  • Getting Back to Node.js

    Javascript is the most popular language on GitHub.  There is roughly 5 times more Javascript than Ruby code! Node.js has been moving very fast since it was first released 5 years ago.  It has been pushing the development of Javascript to expand into numerous other areas including commandline tools and servers.  Coming back to it…

  • Birds Can Fly in the store

    My new Flappy Bird clone, “Birds Can Fly” made it into the store yesterday. To kick things off with a bit of a boost I ran $250 worth of ads. That worked out ok though it’ll take a long time to earn that money back. The idea with the ads was to try to get…

  • Invader Crush in the Store

    After a longer than usual review process, my latest game Invader Crush made it into the App Store. I had to resubmit my flappy bird game due to a bug that was picked up by the reviewers. Expect that to be reviewed within the next week.

  • Open Sourcing old Projects

    While trying to clean up my computer a little I noticed that I have a lot of old projects that are really doing nobody any good by just sitting on my computer.  So in an attempt to both back them up and share them with the world I’m going to be reviewing some of these…