There is a believe that any software developer must contribute or have a side project to work on. Even if it’s great to have, I think there is something bigger at stake doing that.
I have been a bit more quite for the past couple weeks to take a break of my weekly routine of blogging. It’s not because I was lazy, but I wanted to take time to digest WWDC. At the same time I had other running projects, one was my first talk at an iOS meetup. Here is couple tips I would have love to hear earlier.
Last year, I launched with a friend Japan Direct, an itinerary app for Japan travellers. Even if the first version came up quite quickly, I kept iterate but always staying focus on customer feedback first. Almost a year later, it’s good time for synthesis, see what worked and how we created a customer focused app.
From my first year studying computer science, I’ve always wanted to do more on my free time and create simple projects that could be useful for others. I won’t lie, I wish I was able to monetise them but regardless the outcome, learning was always part of the journey.
For a while now, I really wanted to work on a machine learning project, especially since Apple let you import trained model in your iOS app now. Last September, I took part of a 24h hackathon for an Ecommerce business, that was my chance to test it. The idea was simple: a visual search app, listing recommended products based on a picture.
It has been couple months since my last post and despite the idea, a lot of things kept me busy far from blogging. Looking back, it all articulates around the same idea: why it’s important to always keep your skills sharp.
I recently realised that my first blog post was 6 years ago. It’s a good occasion for me to do a little retrospective and share what I learnt from blogging over the years.