App development – Page 2

Essential skills required to get hired as an iOS developer

Posted on October 10, 2022November 10, 2022 by vallish

After Android, iOS is the most popular mobile operating system. Since Apple launched iOS, its adoption has rapidly increased; today, over 2.22 million apps exist on the Apple App Store. The demand for an iOS developer is at an all-time high, and to make a successful career in the field, you should have some most in-demand skills.

The iOS development is increasingly becoming popular because of the demand for Apple devices. Also, the ease of app development, unified user interface, and high-profit potential of iOS apps attract more developers from all over.

This article lists the essential skills required to get employed as an iOS app developer.

1. Practical knowledge of Swift 3.0

Of all the object-oriented programming languages, Swift is the most popular. Developed by Apple, this iOS development programming language has a simple syntax and is much easy to use. Any proficient iOS developer should have practical knowledge of Swift 3.0. It is the programming language developers use to create apps for iOS, Mac OS, watchOS, and tvOS.

As a fast and stable iOS development language, Swift allows developers to create responsive and feature-rich applications much more quickly. You can learn this language easily as it is an open-source programming language with wide adoption in the industry.

2. Core Data

Core Data is an essential framework for any iOS developer to learn. It is used to create data-driven applications as it simplifies model objects’ management and relationships. When you use Core Data, you do not have to bother about routine tasks associated with object life-cycle and graph management. This framework also reduces the amount of code an iOS developer writes to support the model layer. Several applications make Core Data a critical skill, such as saving application data for offline use, adding undo functionality to an app, and caching temporary data.

Companies want to hire iOS developers who are well-versed in using Core Data to build applications that can easily sync across multiple devices. To produce quality customer-centric applications, you must be familiar with this framework.

3. Memory management

Every iOS application should make efficient use of hardware, most notably the memory available on the device. The structure of the iPhone or iPad’s primary short-term memory system is such that the device’s operating system dynamically allocates memory on the integrated RAM to store data temporarily. This is why iOS devices have high resource-constraint on memory. Any talented iOS developer should be able to manage memory effectively. As your apps will get only limited memory access from the system, you have to ensure that your app does not slow down or eventually crash. It would help if you were skilled in proper memory management to ensure that your apps do not cross the established per-process limit. It is one of the essential concepts in iOS development.

4. Spatial reasoning

The iOS development process is versatile, and you must consider the compatibility of your applications across iPhone, Apple Watch, or any new Apple device. The users must be able to interact with your applications on any device. You need to think in 3D and visualize the spiritual relationships between different objects.

As an iOS developer, you must understand the controls or inputs available for various Apple devices. Also, you must be aware of the limitations or restrictions of different iOS versions. As a frontend developer, you can quickly learn spatial reasoning through practice. Here is an excellent resource to understand the design process applicable to iOS development.

5. Experience in unit testing

Eventually, all apps must be tested for their functionality. It requires iOS developers to be familiar with unit testing. A practical and well-planned unit test is small, fast, and isolated. You must be able to design unique test cases that test one thing at a time. For instance, if you are working on a calculator app and added a feature to rewind up to the last ten operations, you might want to write a unit test to check this functionality.

You must not wait for the build of the entire code before testing for work. As early as you conduct unit testing of each feature, you can prevent bugs early on. Companies usually hire iOS developers with unit testing experience who can quickly test the validity and functionality of the applications they are working on.

Conclusion

iOS development gets more manageable if you are well acquainted with the above-listed skills. Companies prefer iOS developers proficient at everything-gathering client requirements, planning the app structure, and developing a scalable iOS app. We hope this article will help you start on the right track to becoming a more proficient and skilled iOS developer.

Talent500 is a global platform for iOS developers to explore career redefining opportunities with fast-growing start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Sign up here to join our elite pool of iOS developers.

7 best development practices for a successful Android app in 2022

Posted on October 10, 2022November 10, 2022 by vallish

Android is the most widely implemented operating system. Its smartphone OS market share is over 87%, according to Statista. Not just in the smartphone market, but Android is used for several other applications such as smart TVs, car navigation systems, and even laptops. Due to its massive market reach and billions of users, Android development evolves faster.

Creating a successful Android app is, however, an endeavor that requires in-depth planning and research. But the fast-paced development prospects have led to the creation of some best practices for android development that ensure you build quality apps every time.

This article lists the seven best mobile development practices for the Android platform.

1. Understand the internal Android framework

Experienced mobile developers understand how important it is to know the internal architecture of an operating system to exploit its functionalities fully. The first principle you must focus on is understanding the internal Android framework. As a developer, you should learn its file system, memory allocation, threading, and CPU usage. You must know the possibilities before you can start development. Once you are confident that you understand the Android framework well enough, you can write quality code that eliminates errors.

2. List the features comprehensively

After you understand the Android platform’s scope, you can create a comprehensive list of features. It is essential before you invest your time in designing and coding the application. Apps that struggle with engaging users or end up with bad reviews are often created without proper feature planning. Think of building an Android app as being similar to planning a city; you need to create a map of the infrastructure, amenities, and types of properties.

Ask these questions to create a comprehensive list of features:

What do you want your users to be able to do with the app?
How will the added features be accessible to the users?
What are similar apps available on the market, and how will your app differ from them?

Brainstorming these ideas will help you create an elaborate list of features necessary to make your Android app successful. You will have a better understanding of the design and development requirements. It even provides insights into the marketing aspects of how you can make your app stand out.

3. Design it with users in mind

Your Android app design must be user-focused. Move away from your personal preferences about the design and focus on data and insights. Knowing your target users and how they will use the app is essential. Some critical design considerations are their age group, when they will use the app (home, office, or on the go), requirements (for disabilities, if any), and demands not fulfilled by other apps.

4. Hire the right talent for development

You need the right mobile developers in the team for quality android app development. You can’t build a successful app with a buggy or low-quality code. One crucial Android development practice is not to skimp on hiring great talent. Skilled developers understand how to fully exploit Android’s memory management, CPU usage, and multi-threading which results in high-performance mobile app development.

Some important aspects to look for are:

3 to 5 years of experience in Android development
History of successful app delivery backed by reviews from previous clients
Hourly rate or fixed price for projects
Have they worked on similar apps?
Whether they will work directly with you or through an agency/partner

5. Select the right technology

Today, there are several technologies available for Android app development. It will help if you choose the right stack depending on your app’s purpose and features. Decide whether you need a hybrid, native, or cross-platform mobile app. Based on the answer, you can choose either React Native or Flutter for Android app development or Objective-C, Kotlin, or Java for native app development.

6. Test from an early stage

Testing is as essential as design and development. Start testing your app at an early stage for device compatibility and bugs. The users are too quick to leave negative reviews if they experience problems. It is best to follow an agile process for mobile development that facilitates rapid, iterative testing and feedback. All bugs must be identified early, and regular product updates are released such that your app’s user experience is consistently high.

7. Always follow Android clean coding guidelines

You must follow Android coding guidelines to create scalable and high-performance Android apps. Clean code improves robustness, minimizes errors, and makes it easy to manage updates. When you follow the clean coding guidelines, you can simplify the complicated development process. It also highly optimizes the code, improving the end-user experience. Ultimately, all these features help bring down the development cost and reduce the development time.

Conclusion

Android app development is easy when you follow these best development practices. The focus must be on user-centric design, quality development, and clean code.

Talent500 has a pool of elite mobile developers who are part of tech teams at some of the biggest enterprises. Sign up here to know more.

How to get your app featured on Google Play or Apple Store

Posted on October 7, 2022November 16, 2022 by vallish

As per 2022 stats, The App Store has more than 1.8 million apps, while the Google Playstore has 2.59 million published apps. Both the platforms are overly crowded. However, some apps stand out when included in App Store’s Today Tab or Google Play Store’s ‘For You’ section.

What do these featured apps do differently to occupy such a prominent position in terms of visibility in the app stores?

The answer is multi-faceted. Without any specific requirements from Apple or Google, we must rely on the wisdom of other app developers and marketing experts. In this article, we will detail the aspects and features that apps must uphold to increase their chances of being featured on the Google Play Store and App Store.

Why is the inclusion in the featured section beneficial for an app?

With millions of apps competing for the users’ attention and space on their smartphones, earning a place in the featured section on Google Play Store or App Store will give your app the visibility and boost it requires to stand out.

According to Apple, when an app is featured in the “Today” app section, its downloads and re-downloads increase multifold.

Here is the performance of GoNoodle, an activity app for kids, when it was featured as the “App of the Day.” The download for the app nearly tripled when it appeared in the coveted featured section.

While there is no detailed list to follow, we are about to share some essential factors contributing to the likelihood of an app appearing as a featured recommendation.

Create unique features

Study the apps that regularly feature as the editor’s choice to evaluate the features unique to these apps. Install relevant apps on your phone and analyze the design, user experience, functionality, and features that make them stand out.

Also, discover gaps between the target audience’s demand and the solution provided by existing apps. This will be the sweet spot that you can fill. Ensure you provide the required features in your app to make it popular.

Focus on Android Vitals

To be featured in the Play Store, an app must meet all of Google’s basic quality requirements. There are several policies for an app to follow to have a chance to be recommended by the Play Store. Here are the most important ones:

Policy Practices

Launch Checklist

Design Guidelines

Core Quality Guidelines

Google implements these policies to ensure that users have a seamless experience and that app build quality is high.

You must include all the optimizations in your mobile app development to ensure that the app performs well with Android Vitals indicators.

The Android Vitals is an initiative by Google to improve the stability and performance of apps on smart devices. According to Google’s official statement, “exhibiting bad behaviour in vitals will negatively affect the user experience in your app and is likely to result in bad ratings and poor discoverability on the Play Store.”

The four most crucial Android Vital indicators are the Application Not Responding (ANR) rates, Excessive wakeups, Crash rates, and Stuck partial wake locks.

App optimizations for the App Store

For optimizing an iOS app, you can take a hint from Apple’s indication for editors to follow when selecting an app to be included in the Today tab.

Apple editors focus on the following:

Usability, appeal, and overall build quality of the app
Uniqueness and innovation
Localizations: the app must be relevant to the target audience
Well-integrated features for the best accessibility
The App store product page must have compelling screenshots, descriptions, and app previews

From all the above-listed factors, the “uniqueness” of the app is harder to quantify; the rest are measurable elements that can be improved.

Localization

With over 6 billion active smartphone users, localization will help you incentivize users other than English speakers. You tend to rank higher due to the multi-lingual UI and UX design approach when you don’t restrict your app to a particular audience or geographical location.

Plan on offering your app in different languages to increase your chances of featuring in the top sections of the App Store and the Play Store. You can refer to this Localization Checklist from Google to make your app accessible globally.

Ensure security of users

There has been a 62% increase in mobile malware attacks since 2021. This underlines the requirement for security-focused mobile app development. App platforms continuously monitor apps for security breaches. If your app has to appear in the coveted featured section, it must follow the best security protocols. Some essential features to include are:

Disabled debug mode
No logging of sensitive data
Regular integrity checks
Auto jailbreak detection
Source code encryption to prevent reverse engineering
Enable multi-factor authentication

Conclusion

By following these mobile app development and optimization practices, there is a multi-fold increase in chances for an app to appear as a featured recommendation. And if you believe that your app has adhered to all the best practices but still does not appear as a featured app, you can get in touch with Apple and Google app-editors here:

App Store contact form

Play Store contact form

You can directly submit your app for expert review using these above-listed contact forms.

Talent500 is a platform for app developers to discover career redefining opportunities. Join our elite pool of app developers and get access to resources that make you job-ready.

5 Necessary soft skills for DevOps engineers

Posted on September 28, 2022 by

Software development methodologies play an essential role in the overall quality of the product. These methodologies define the principles and practices that allow teams to work efficiently. DevOps is one such methodology that brings development and business operations teams together. It is a culture of creating one unified system that combines tasks and goals across different groups.

To ensure that the DevOps philosophy is successful with projects in real life, DevOps engineers and IT teams must work together to keep up continuous updates and deployment. This collaboration requires soft skills. The success of DevOps engineers dramatically depends on their ability to communicate and collaborate with team members to solve problems.

What are DevOps soft skills?

Soft skills are character traits that enable a person to work with others professionally. In the software industry, the technical skills get you noticed, but your soft skills make you stand out and help you advance within a team or a company.

DevOps soft skills are the traits that allow engineers to ensure team coordination and convince teammates to work towards a unified goal. Great DevOps engineers are usually excellent communicators and listeners.

Here we list some necessary soft skills for DevOps engineers.

1. Great listening

Listening is much more than just hearing out what others have to say. Great listeners can understand the orator’s point of view. The ability to listen might seem like a given characteristic trait, but it’s a difficult skill to master.

DevOps culture depends a lot on collaboration between teams. DevOps engineers must anticipate what other people are thinking and trying to express. Listening also implies understanding the impact, negative and positive, on the overall project by including other stakeholders’ ideas. Software development is a complicated process that includes multiple layers of communication. Troubleshooting sophisticated engineering problems is difficult, but the feeling of not being heard or understood can be highly frustrating for developers, designers, and other team members.

Develop listening skills to ensure that you understand what team members are trying to communicate.

2. Clear communication

DevOps methodology is significantly dependent on communication. One of the core responsibilities of DevOps engineers is to ensure an environment where developers and operations team members can ask questions and share ideas comfortably. The most successful software development teams have different people with different experiences coming together and creating great products.

Communication is vital for significant product development and delivery. Excellent communication means being clear about your intentions in conversations. There must be no scope for anxiety or confusion within a DevOps team. Practice transparent communication to ensure no ambiguity in your statements that can harm the project’s success.

3. Adaptability

Adaptability is mandatory for DevOps engineers and anyone working in the software industry. As software and hardware evolve continuously, adaptation is needed to keep pace with the new frameworks, programming languages, and tools.

DevOps engineers must be prepared to invest consistently in upskilling. Adaptability is a continuous process, and you can ensure that you are adaptable by:

Learning a new programming language or skill extends your flexibility to work with teams. Continuous learning is one of the best ways to become adaptable.
Challenge yourself to work with diverse teams and make yourself comfortable about working with others. As part of a team, DevOps engineers are responsible not only for the development but also for the deployment of projects. You must move beyond technical skills to work with business operations teams.

4. Be aware of when to ask for help

A remarkable characteristic of great leaders is that they know when to reach out to others for help. As a DevOps engineer, you must know when you need assistance from supervisors. DevOps methodology encourages the balance between self-help and collaboration.

Once you have gone through all the basic troubleshooting steps and taken the necessary provisions to solve a problem on your own, escalate to a superior. There is no point in getting stuck in a situation for hours or days that can be solved with a few minutes of conversation. Too much or too little collaboration is detrimental to a project. You must try to resolve issues independently and be aware of when to ask for help.

5. Foster creativity

Outside-the-box thinking helps engineers push the limits of science and solve the most challenging problems. Creativity is one of the essential DevOps soft skills allowing professionals to experiment with different approaches and tools to solve problems within the restrictions of DevOps methodology.

Fostering creativity is vital to spark inspiration and can prove to be a great team-building soft skill. Focus on promoting collective problem-solving, developing new ideas, and brainstorming different approaches within the team.

Conclusion

DevOps is the modern culture of the IT industry that has proven to be excellently efficient at accelerating product development and deployment. To be a successful DevOps engineer, focus on these soft skills along with other technical skills. Here’s a complete guide on how software engineers can explore DevOps opportunities.

Talent500 can help you broaden your horizon and explore exclusive DevOps opportunities at some of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Join us today.

Top iOS app development trends to watch out for in 2022

Posted on September 19, 2022 by seoteam

Apple devices constitute a significant share of all mobile devices in the world. According to market research, the percentage of Apple in the mobile market increased from 40% in 2020 to 47% in 2021-22.

Unsurprisingly, iOS app development is also propelled by the growth of Apple devices. People’s behavior is changing, and businesses are rapidly adopting digital transformation. The app development market is booming and is expected to reach $ 613 billion by 2025. As an app developer, you must know what’s changing in the industry to be ahead of the competition.

This article discusses the critical iOS app development trends you must keep a tab on in 2022.

1. Swift 6

While not a trend but an essential upgrade in the iOS app development sector is Swift 6. For iOS developers, Swift is one of the best programming languages as it is specially created for iOS platforms. Whether small or big-scale apps, Swift is used for iOS app development at all scales. Companies like LinkedIn, Apple, Slack, and Netflix use Swift for their iOS applications.

Swift 6 is the latest programming language version with essential upgrades such as powerful API and module stability, comprehensive compatibility, and added features to help iOS developers create apps for future Apple devices. We recommend you use Swift 6 for iOS applications as it has tools that allow you to focus on code quality and logic much more effectively.

2. Machine learning and artificial intelligence

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have been used in several segments of software development. While these disciplines are not new to 2022, their recent growth has brought many positive changes in app development. Undoubtedly, one of the year’s leading trends in iOS app development will be the inclusion of these technologies. For instance, Apple introduced the latest version of the machine learning framework – Core ML 3, to help developers create applications across a broad range of segments such as computer vision, speech recognition, IoT, and so on.

You must focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence because they can help keep your apps relevant by enabling them to learn and grow. As users will use your iOS application, machine learning will empower it to learn about the user’s preferences and behaviors and anticipate their requirements or wants to serve them better. Some apps are already doing it, such as Spotify’s search suggestions, the ELSA English learning iOS app, and Siri.

3. Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT is the technology that automates the most routine task in our lives by connecting various devices and enabling them to share information. The impact of IoT is expected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2025.

iOS development is embracing IoT to provide better apps for users. For example, iOS health applications use this technology to assist healthcare providers better. They can check a patient’s condition at home through several devices, such as heart rate monitors that share data with their iOS applications. Using several image processing algorithms, Triton Sponge is an excellent example of an iOS app using IoT to help determine how much blood a patient has lost.

Another trend that the Internet of Things is bringing to iOS app development is wearables.

4. Wearables

Wearables are already a common sight. Apple Watch, fitness bands, and Apple AirTag, are all examples of wearables. These devices are empowered by IoT technology and share data with their dedicated iOS apps. As we move towards a more connected world with technological advancements in the internet infrastructure, we can expect wearables to become increasingly popular. With the wearable software market poised to reach $ 118.16 billion by 2028, it is one of the critical iOS app development trends to keep a tab on.

Besides the health segment, wearable devices are also becoming popular as they allow you to access social media content without using your phone. Popular messengers like Telegram and Slack already have Apple Watch applications to receive and send messages. This is a trend that most other services are expected to follow in the coming years.

5. iBeacon

The iBeacon is the talk of the town due to its marketing capabilities. The powerful technology from Apple is grabbing the attention of marketing because it allows us to send push notifications to iPhone users using Bluetooth technology.

It’s easier to understand the application of iBeacon with an example. Suppose you want to notify potential customers about the sale in your clothing store if they pass by your store. While banner ads and billboards are an option, they are not as high converting as direct push notifications. Using iBeacon, you can create an application to send information to iPhone users as soon as they are within a set range of your store.

This iOS app development trend is finding high adoption in the retail industry to boost sales. If you develop diverse applications for the retail and e-commerce industry, this is the trend for you to follow in 2022.

Conclusion

Apple devices are here to stay, and iOS app development is poised to grow by leaps and bounds. We hope these trends will help you be in touch with the latest development in the industry.

Talent 500 is the platform for iOS app developers to find global opportunities with fast-growing start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Sign up here to join the elite pool of iOS developers.