Hey everyone,

First off, a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!

Tim and I are very happy with the year devRant has had, and thinking back, there are a lot of 2017 highlights to recap. Here are just a few of the ones that come to mind (this list is not exhaustive and I'm definitley forgetting stuff!):

- We introduced the devRant supporter program (devRant++)! (https://devrant.com/rants/638594/...). Thank you so much to everyone who has embraced devRant++! This program has helped us significantly and it's made it possible for us to mantain our current infrustructure and not have to cut down on servers/sacrifice app performance and stability.
- We added avatar pets (https://devrant.com/rants/455860/...)
- We finally got the domain devrant.com thanks to @wiardvanrij (https://devrant.com/rants/938509/...)
- The first international devRant meetup (Dutch) with organized by @linuxxx and was a huge success (https://devrant.com/rants/937319/... + https://devrant.com/rants/935713/...)
- We reached 50,000 downloads on Android (https://devrant.com/rants/728421/...)
- We introduced notif tabs (https://devrant.com/rants/1037456/...), which make it easy to filter your in-app notifications by type
- @AlexDeLarge became the first devRant user to hit 50,000++ (https://devrant.com/rants/885432/...), and @linuxxx became the first to hit 75,000++
- We made an April Fools joke that got a lot of people mad at us and hopefully got some laughs too (https://devrant.com/rants/506740/...)
- We launched devDucks!! (https://devducks.com)
- We got rid of the drawer menu in our mobile apps and switched to a tab layout
- We added the ability to subscribe to any user's rants (https://devrant.com/rants/538170/...)
- Introduced the post type selector (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...) (which will be used for filtering - more details below)
- Started a bug/feature tracker GitHub repo (https://github.com/devRant/devRant)
- We did our first ever live stream (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
- Added an awesome all-black theme (devRant++) (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...)
- We created an "active discussions" screen within the app so you can easily find rants with booming discussions!
- Thanks to the suggestion of many community members, we added "scroll to bottom" functionality to rants with long comment threads to make those rants more usable
- We improved our app stability and set our personal record for uptime, and we also cut request times in half with some database cluster upgrades
- Awesome new community projects: https://devrant.com/projects (more will be added to the list soon, sorry for the delay!)
- A new landing page for web (https://devrant.com), that was the first phase of our web overhaul coming soon (see below)

Even after all of this stuff, Tim and I both know there is a ton of work to do going forward and we want to continue to make devRant as good as it can be. We rely on your feedback to make that happen and we encourage everyone to keep submitting and discussing ideas in the bug/feature tracker (https://github.com/devRant/devRant).

We only have a little bit of the roadmap right now, but here's some things 2018 will bring:

- A brand new devRant web app: we've heard the feedback loud and clear. This is our top priority right now, and we're happy to say the completely redesigned/overhauled devRant web experience is almost done and will be released in early 2018. We think everyone will really like it.

- Functionality to filter rants by type: this feature was always planned since we introduced notif types, and it will soon be implemented. The notif type filter will allow you to select the types of rants you want to see for any of the sorting methods.

- App stability and usability: we want to dedicate a little time to making sure we don't forget to fix some long-standing bugs with our iOS/Android apps. This includes UI issues, push notification problems on Android, any many other small but annoying problems. We know the stability and usability of devRant is very important to the community, so it's important for us to give it the attention it deserves.

- Improved profiles/avatars: we can't reveal a ton here yet, but we've got some pretty cool ideas that we think everyone will enjoy.

- Private messaging: we think a PM system can add a lot to the app and make it much more intuitive to reach out to people privately. However, Tim and I believe in only launching carefully developed features, so rest assured that a lot of thought will be going into the system to maximize privacy, provide settings that make it easy to turn off, and provide security features that make it very difficult for abuse to take place. We're also open to any ideas here, so just let us know what you might be thinking.

There will be many more additions, but those are just a few we have in mind right now.

We've had a great year, and we really can't thank every member of the devRant community enough. We've always gotten amazingly positive feedback from the community, and we really do appreciate it. One of the most awesome things is when some compliments the kindness of the devRant community itself, which we hear a lot. It really is such a welcoming community and we love seeing devs of all kind and geographic locations welcomed with open arms.

2018 will be an important year for devRant as we continue to grow and we will need to continue the momentum. We think the ideas we have right now and the ones that will come from community feedback going forward will allow us to make this a big year and continue to improve the devRant community.

Thanks everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community!

Looking forward to 2018,
- David and Tim

Hey everyone,

@trogus and I have been working on some cool devRant features that we're going to be launching very soon. In addition, as some might remember from a recent discussion, we're trying to bring in some more revenue (so we can at least break even) to avoid having to think about advertisements in the app. To do that, we're brainstorming possible useful add-on features maybe that we can offer to devRant++ members, or possibly offer for a different plan or as a complimentary product (under the devRant umbrella, but separate in terms of where it's accessed.)

If you have a few minutes, we'd appreciate some feedback by taking this survey @trogus put together: https://surveymonkey.com/r/DT9MKVN/

Also feel free to discuss here too if you want, and thanks everyone!

This is not a rant, but I just wanted to share some good news! My brother and I have launched an app called Programmer’s Music. It contains our favourite music tracks and tracks suggested by some of our developer/creative colleagues. It’s for listening to music while coding. We have also integrated Pomodoro time management method in it. It’s ad-free and FREE. :) Please check out the app at https://promusic.tech/2mJrw8A. Feel free to leave an honest feedback. 

Please feel free to leave us a message with your favourite tracks and we will add them. Please share it, follow on Twitter and/or like our Facebook page. Thank you so much!

Thank you, everyone.

PS.- Atom editor fans would ❤ it.

TL;DR: If you're an Android user, do yourself a favour and check out https://simplemobiletools.com/ . You're welcome.

Dear diary, today was a good day.
A small part of my faith in humanity was recovered after I found about Tibor Kaputa.

Apparently, this guy - like many of us - was fed up with the bloat, bugs, bullshit and 'features' of many of the stock Android apps that come preinstalled on most phones. And so, he decided to make his own.

Unlike most of us however, he actually pulled through. And then he made them open source.

No bullshit permission requirements.
No ads or tracking.
Custom themes.
And no, not just 'toggle white/dark mode', I'm talking 'pick your own color scheme', both within the app and for the app icon (!).
And then sync your colour scheme across the entire suite of apps (!!).
Simple UI, with a lot of customizable settings.
And if you get them from f-droid, it's all completely free as in BEER too!

I've spent a lot of time in the last year trying to find software that does what it's supposed to do well, without trying to pull any sneaky bullshit in the background or annoy me with crap that I don't care about in a miserable attempt to show off its useless features.

I'm not a fan of Medium myself either, but the author's article about how his suite of apps was born really resonated with me. If you care about privacy, open source software, and doing things right, you should really give it a read: https://medium.com/@tibbi/...

I'm particularly a fan of the Gallery, the File Manager, and the Music player apps, and the others don't look half bad either.

A critical vulnerability was detected in Electron and I urge all the devRantron users to update their app manually.

Please go to https://www.devrantron.com get the latest version which has the necessary patches.

Due to a request, we added compact mode in the app, which can be used to view a distraction-free mode of the UI. Notifications screen is a little bit more readable now. The read notifications are now greyed out.

Again, the auto update will not work for this version. Please manually update as soon as possible.

-- How I succeeded turning a PHP/MYSQL app into Android app within a week --

Alright. So I wanted to grab your attention to what I'm about to write. If you are here just to read about the technologies I used, jump to bottom.

This is also a kind of rant; rant against the other fellow devs who demotivated me originally when I asked a question.

I'll not go in the details of my original question. Here's the link for those who are interested:
https://www.devrant.io/rants/366496
It's been days since I achieved what I wanted to but I thought someone might learn from my experience. So here it goes.

Why FREE?
Well, it was an important client. I worked on his website and he asked for an app for the same website and told me he won't be able to pay me anything for the app. I was, somewhat, under the impression that he might be testing me. If not, then I would end up learning something new. It wasn't a bad deal for me so I didn't hesitate to took it.

Within a week, I was able to pull the job and finish it. I felt so much better (and proud of myself) when I finished the app within the week and client approved it. What did I get? I got a GOOD BANK CLIENT in my pocket now. Got a lot more worth of projects from the same client. If I were being paid for the app, I might not have pulled the job so much better.

So the moral of this story is never to give up. NOT EVERY DEVELOPER SELLS SHORT ONLY FOR "MONEY". Some enjoy learning new things. And some like me love to accept new challenges and are not afraid to try something new everyday.

In case, someone is interested in knowing the technologies I used, here they go;

PhoneGap
Framework7
Template7
Apache Cordova

I wrote an API for the interaction between the web services and the app.

Also, Ionic Framework seems promising but it had a learning curve and time was of the essence. But I'm gonna learn it anyhow.

I created a random website a month ago (a project which took me about 2-3 weeks)... made for developers.
But unfortunately I didn't find anyone interested, just a few users that used it once (ok, I spent nothing for marketing and posted it only on my Twitter and on Product Hunt).

Anyway this is it: https://reviewti.me/

I spent about $4 for the domain, maybe someone will find it useful and it wasn't a waste of time and "money". 😅
Please don't see this as spam, I earn nothing (free website, 0 ads), I created it just for fun and maybe to be a little useful for app developers.
If it isn't for you, just tell me what do you think about it (if you want).

Thanks!

We are on a roll here people (side note, if You are joining the site, thank you but if you are using disposable email accounts at least wait for the verification code to arrive to said account):
So our most well know and belowed CMS that brings lots of love and feels to those that have to (still) deal with it, had some interesting going on:
Oh Joy! "Backdoor in Captcha Plugin Affects 300K WordPress Sites", well arent You a really naughty little boy, eh?
https://wordfence.com/blog/2017/...
Remember that "little" miner thingy that some users here has thought about using for their site? Even Yours truly that does make use of Ads Networks (fuck you bandwidth is not free) even I have fully condenmed the Miner type ads for alot of reasons, like your computer being used as a literal node for DDoSing, well... how about your "Antivirus" Android phone apps being literally loaded with miner trojans too?
https://securelist.com/jack-of-all-...
"When You literally stopped giving any resembles of a fuck what people think about Your massive conglomerate since You still literally dominate the market since alot of people give zero fucks of how Orwellian We are becoming at neck-breaking speed" aka Google doesnt want other webbrowsers to get into market, Its happy with having MemeFox as its competitor:
https://theregister.co.uk/2017/12/...
Talking about MemeFox fucking up again:
https://theregister.co.uk/2017/12/...
And of course here at Legion Front we cant make finish a report without our shitting at Amazon news report:
"French gov files €10m complaint: Claims Amazon abused dominance
Probe found unfair contracts for sellers"
More News at:
https://legionfront.me/page/news

And for what you may actually came and not me reporting stuff at Legion's Orwell Hour News™ ... the free games, right?:
Oxenfree is free in GoG, its a good game, I played like 2 months after its release and I think I heard they wanted to make a Live Action movie or some sort of thing after it:
https://www.gog.com/game/oxenfree

Kingdom Classic is also free:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/...

Close Order Steam Key: HWRMI-2V3PQ-ZQX8B
More Free Keys at:
https://legionfront.me/ccgr

So following from this rant:
https://devrant.io/rants/618679/...

Warning long rant ahead

I resigned and my last day is tomorrow, I've released the app updates a week ago, patched a couple bugs for iOS.

My boss and the idiot who can't open an email on his phone go off to use the app as part of some training thing for the company.

I got a call yesterday saying the Android app has issues and I proceeded to ask my boss what type of phone they have:

"Samsung and Huawei"

I thought okay I need more info "what type of phone..." He responds with wouldn't have a clue....

I can't see the phone, didn't get a screenshot or anything like that but I'm expected to just know what the phone is.

My boss goes on to say yeah it's the app (he is literally the most computer illiterate person I could think of aside from guy who can't open emails on phone, how the fuck do you know that?)

Me: "From all the testing I've done the app works"

Look if you want a more robust error free update hire more than one developer I can't test every single fucking use case to determine the app is 100% bug free, I've tested on at least 10 phones before releasing the update just to be absolutely sure I got everything done and okay I missed something.

So I proceed to get my boss to tell the guy who has the issue I'll sign him up to the testing app to find out the cause and hopefully fix the issue, I setup crashlytics send the email and get a call from my boss saying the guy didn't get the email.

Well okay is it my problem that we have two emails for the same person where one of them is a typo? No it's the guy who asked and wrote down the email instead of actually forwarding a blank email from him to be absolutely sure, I sent the email to both just to be on the safe side.

I swear if he is another idiot who can't open emails on his phone well I can't help him, app works on my phone and the phones at work.

I need a phone where it doesn't work so I can get a solution I know works but if I have to deal with these idiots that can't even check an email how the fuck do I do that?

Sorry about the formatting just needed to get this off my chest before I start work.

Oh and I get asked "so who'll fix the bugs when you're gone" well I can't (in reality I'm not working for free, I'm not traveling 1 1/2 commute time to fix one bug for free, go hire someone you think will love to work for minimum wage and let's see if this guy can do what I did)

I feel a bit ashamed posting this, compared to some of the amazing things you guys have built.
Coolest thing I have built was my first app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...
Story:
It was back around new years 2014-2015. I bought a charango and started playing some gigs. I carried around a book with chords. I thought it was a bit annoying to have to take it with me. Looked for an app and there wasn't any (today there are 2-3 other). So I decided to make an app.
Bare in mind that I had just a bit of experience with C from university. No OOP. So I went on youtube and started watching some tutorials while I developed it. Learned by trying. Trial and error.
After around 2-3 months of working on it every day after class until going to sleep, it was ready.
I decided to put it on play store for other people to use. Turns out there was a need. I got 10,000 downloads in less than half a year (it is quite a niche, so unexpected). Since then it has stayed around 6000 installs on active devices.
It is my biggest personal project success.
Since then, I have continued making apps in my free time, getting better and more professional. But none has come even close to that ones popularity. My plan is that to mark the 5th anniversary, I am working on a v2.0 (complete rewrite) with new features and instruments.
Sorry about tl;dr

A few months passed. Still jobless. I am a php dev btw. In stead of giving up. I made a simple app allows people vote up and down restaurants I Melbourne Australia. https://melres.shopshop.space. I learn a lot about nodejs, react, redux, express, mongo, nginx, Ubuntu. I apply for nodejs job, IT support, DevOps, API job, backend job. All got rejected. Due to experience and competiton. I even ask I can work for DevOps for free. Still no reply. In stead of giving up, I keep learning, doing the thing I love. Focus on learn how to learn. Day in and day out. Hopefully it gets better.

Free games give-away:

Quake Champions is free on Steam till the 18th of June:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/...
(Windows)

Ziggurat is free for on GoG just for today:
https://www.gog.com/game/ziggurat
(Windows, Mac, Linux)

https://github.com/jaggy/ideas

I've decided to open source some of my ideas that's stuck in my notes app.

Not really sure if it's useful or not but feel free to suggest some or comment on those ideas.

In june 2018 I am going to get my software developer diploma! I am very excited about it. But for now the workload is just getting higher and higher.

Therefore I think I am going to be less active on here for a while.

But before that I would like to introduce you to a new app two colleagues and I wrote to help students in similar situations.

https://beta.outcobra.school

It is a Website that allows you to manage all your study / school related stuff in one place.

It would be great if some of you guys would give it a try.
We appreciate all your feedback!
But it's a side project and still in beta... so please do not expect it to be perfect (yet, we are trying to get there...)

PS It's completely open source just search for outcobra on github. Feel free to open up as many issues as you like

I've made app that simplifies usage of https://transfer.sh.

You can install it via pip install pytransfer. Then you can easily upload file via transfer filename1 filename2 etc..

Feel free to try it.
-----
You can contribute to project at https://github.com/PapiCZ/...