Wir haben Power Planner in unserer Liste Windows Phone Geheimtipps für Studierende vorgestellt. Kurz darauf habe ich den Entwickler dahinter interviewt.
Please introduce yourself. What is your day to day job, how do you make a living, what’s your education?
I’m Andrew Bares, a college student who develops Windows Phone apps in his free time. I’m currently a senior at the University of Arizona, studying computer science. I had an internship with Microsoft last summer, but otherwise have simply been a full-time student and part-time indie app developer.
Why have you decided to develop for Windows 8 and Windows Phone?
I’ve been a Windows Phone fan since Windows Mobile 6, all the way through WP 8.1. Thus, I naturally wanted to develop apps for the platform that I personally use.
How do you decide which apps to develop?
I develop apps based on what I need – I needed a homework planner, and there weren’t any good ones, so I created
Power Planner
. Later, I needed universal search, so I pumped out
Unify
. I also browse Craigslist a lot for used cars, so I made
8list
.
From idea to first release in the marketplace – how long did it take to create the first version of your power planner app?
I first created Power Planner back in freshman year of college. I had one semester of Intro to Java under my belt, and decided to put it to use and build Power Planner. It took probably close to three months of coding until I had published the first version of Power Planner. However, looking back, it was terrible (lacking a ton of features, poorly written, etc). Since then, countless hours have gone into updating Power Planner to make it as awesome as it currently is (online sync, grade calculation, and more).
Nowadays, depending on the complexity of the app, it can take me anywhere from a few days to a few months to write an app. For example, the local universal search app only took two (full) days of coding till it was ready to be published. Slightly more complicated apps like my Craigslist client takes more like a month (of part time development). However, once you write one Windows Phone app, you can reuse a lot of the tricks and code you’ve written for future apps, reducing development time.
Which tools and information resources do you use to develop apps?
I use the normal Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 development SDK with Visual Studio, writing apps in C#. I test Windows Phone apps on my actual devices, since I can’t run the emulator on my computer.
MSDN is often very helpful for figuring out how to develop certain features. Some people also publish their own experiences with things like IsolatedStorage, which helps you find out how to use IsolatedStorage if the MSDN documentation isn’t sufficient. And using StackOverflow is of course obligatory.
Power Planner can be used on Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 devices. How do you like Microsofts implementation of universal apps?
Currently, Microsoft’s implementation of universal apps isn’t completely finished. You can share a good amount of code, but it’s still lacking. Windows 10 will be improving that.
Thus, I still have two separate projects for my Windows 8.1 and WP8 versions of Power Planner. Making a universal app would mean that I would have to leave behind WP 8.0 and only support WP 8.1, which is a poor decision. So I simply never bothered wasting time creating a universal app.
Windows 10 will likely require rewriting some application code anyways, so I’d rather wait till Windows 10 comes out instead of wasting effort making a universal app on 8.1.
What are your wishes for the future of the microsoft platform?
My main wish is that Microsoft does everything possible to increase market share. That means Microsoft needs to consider Windows Phone a first-class smartphone (currently, they often ignore Windows Phone and release better apps first on other platforms).
With more market share, I could potentially make a living being an indie app developer, which would be incredible. Otherwise, I would have to look into developing for Android and iOS if I wanted to make enough money to live off of.
Are you in contact with other devs? Which app development related platforms do you use?
I know a few other Windows Phone devs, but I haven’t ever collaborated with them.
I use the native Windows 8.1/WP8 development platform. Those cross-platform development platforms typically have poor performance, so I stay away from them. I prefer writing native apps.
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