In the last few months, I worked on two projects that were similar in scope and complexity; both were API backends for mobile apps, had similar requirements and timeframes. However, one thing set them apart: one was written in Django + REST while the other was written in Clojure + GraphQL.

Since I was the main developer for both projects, I was able to make useful comparisons between both approaches. In this post, I’ll describe the pros and cons of each.

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To use or not to use Xcode’s Interface Builder (let’s call it IB) is a very common discussion between iOS developers. There are many arguments against using it like version control issues and difficulties in debugging. This post in our blog have some considerations about it for example. But I believe that if the project is well structured and the team knows how to use it, these issues can be avoided and IB can become a very powerful tool.

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Depending on your journey as a designer, you may be used to the freedom that graphic media allows: to create overlaps/overlays or to elaborate compositions and grids that fill all the paper with pretty organized photos and texts. However, why is it so hard to build a web page with this same freedom? Fortunately the capacity to build these layouts have been improving and what’s best: it is so simple that you can start using it right now!

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After developing mobile applications for more than eight months, I had the opportunity of joining a project that was being developed using React Native, an open source JavaScript library that, according to its documentation, lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. I always loved challenges and learning new things, so I immediately accepted this opportunity.

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If you are familiar with iOS trending topics, you certainly already know VIPER. It’s an alternative to MVC (Model View Controller) pattern and it was already explained in our blog. If you haven’t read yet, I strongly recommend you to do it.

There is a lot of content on the web talking about the VIPER miracles and how this new architecture is much better than the previous ones. But you always have to ask some questions before putting your efforts and resources into an “unknown path”.

On this article, I will clarify some questions about the VIPER workflow and if you should be using it on a new project – or even on your old running app.

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In this article I’m going to share with you the recipe that Cheesecake Labs uses to prepare its Cakers, by giving them the special ingredients to bake a Cheesecake using the right temperature – or as it might be said in other companies, how CKL makes the first days of the new employees a good experience and how to get them started at our projects.

At the time this post was written, I had been a Caker for a bit longer than two months. Now, I want to show the experience of becoming one from the hiring process until the first great achievement, which in my case, was an app release at the Store.

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We are living a new today, every day, filled with new tools and paradigms. Often, we catch ourselves trying to apply yesterday architectures on new technologies, and that can end bad. One of these cases is BEM – a CSS naming convention – which solves a problem that we maybe don’t have anymore.
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Automated database migrations have been a convenient way of dealing with schema changes for a long time in Django. It’s been only 3 years since migrations have been incorporated into Django but South had been the de-facto solution since 2008.

The same way an ORM allows us to forget about SQL when writing queries to the database, migrations make sure we don’t write a single ‘ALTER TABLE’ in our schema changes. Some may argue that’s bad: we “lose control” over a critical part of our infrastructure, we don’t know how to write SQL anymore when needed, we’re not sure how that operation is really translated into SQL, etc, etc. Ok, these points are actually valid. However, Django migrations module is more than just a way of automatically generating and applying SQL statements, it’s also a transparent API to write your own database changes in Python. It comes with wheels for those who need it (or trust enough) and tools for those who like to get their hands dirty.

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Serverless. The new hype buzzword is taking over the development universe, promising big savings in infrastructure for applications and less deployment headaches to developers. In an agile world, shipping scalable software with budget constraints has become a big puzzle: one that Serverless may solve.

Today I’m going to give you an overview of its history, basic concepts, providers, frameworks, benefits and drawbacks. One thing, though: personally, I don’t like the term Serverless, as it was coined by the Serverless Framework, but now it stuck and everybody is using it. What can I do?

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When I started as an iOS developer, my biggest problem was with app crashes, that’s because I really didn’t know how iOS, Swift, and Objective-C worked. Back then, I wrote a lot of bad code, not worrying about memory usage, memory access, ARC or GCD. That’s simply because I didn’t know about that stuff. I was a beginner, for God sakes.

Like most beginners, Stack Overflow community taught me a lot about “doing things the right way”. I’ve learned a lot of tricks that helped me improve my work process. In this article, I’ll share some of them about the most important tool used in this learning process: the breakpoints!

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