mobile app developer

Life’s a journey

January 1, 2016Joey Rigor Kontak Mobile Apps

from legacy programmer to

This is a story of my journey from a

legacy programmer to mobile app

developer.

Hope it inspires old programmers like

me that age is just a number and

conquering new worlds can never be

too late.

I started programming in college in the 80s using an Apple clone.

Learned Basic, the proverbial language for newbies at the time, and made

accounting programs for small

businesses.

1995 was the year I started building

software professionally.

I just finished graduate studies in New York

University and worked for New York Life for a

short while.

Went back home to the Philippines to take a

break.

Never thought that this journey home will change

the course of my life.

SunLife of Canada, the second biggest life insurance company in our country, was in need of

a proposal illustration system for its agents. 

I had a chance encounter with the IT head of SunLife (who became its President/CEO) and we started to talk. Told her that I already made the system in New York.

Thought I'l just finish this project and go back to the Big Apple.

But other companies were interested and bought the same system - ManuLife,

Insular Life, Coco Life, Aetna Life and Nippon Life.

I was working days and nights (grabbing a few winks then and there, paradoxically living a mobile life when

mobile was not even a trend yet!).

Sadly, after almost ten years building and maintaining the same system, I was burned out.

Met one of life’s many crossroads, went on hiatus and started a farming life.

But eventually I got tired of trying to use computing theories to farm management.

I went back to the city in 2010 to upgrade my software, ported it to C#

and created a web app.

Back to my old love.

But the vision of building a mobile app remained. Tried out Android because of its large user base. But its security problem and limited development tools became a major barrier for building a business app.

Oops, wrong turn.

Still, a confluence of events led me to this road.

One day, a friend made a rather prophetic

comment.

“Most of our financial advisors start with an Android phone but

eventually bought an iPhone after generating a

lot of sales”.

Hmm, there is something here. iOS - stable.. secure.. phones and

tablets bought by rich guys.

But a part of me held back. I’ve been using Windows all my computing life from its first

version up to Windows 7. Now I have learn a new OS.

Mentioning my dilemma over a couple of brews , an old friend gave me a used

MacBook and said “Try it out”.

It was supposed to be for my daughter but I

secretly used it at night when she was fast

asleep. Sneaky.

Tried a few trivial programs and I was hooked!

This is a great OS, has a stable development framework,

Xcode, and it’s already in version 7! 

After months of learning, debugging and pushing Xcode (and myself) to its limit, I

finally ported my system to iOS.

The journey came full circle.

I learned programming with a 1980s Apple clone.

Ended up 35 years later with an Apple MacBook building mobile apps.

“Now I think I have reached another crossroad. From the legacy programmer.. to farmer.. to

mobile app developer.

That sounds good.”

AboutMeAs a software developer, I have always been interested in learning new things regarding technology. In how I can share what I’ve learned specially to others with professions outside my field. 

This interest became a passion as I see a lot of people using technology in their daily lives but have no idea how it works. Much less how it was build. Sadly, almost all of us are mere consumers.

My previous blogs and those to follow will try to convince everybody, in my own small way, to learn how to code. How to become creators of technology.

http://www.kontakios.com

Now what?This is the initial part of a series of posts

trying to convince you to be a coder.

Hope you are ready, grasshopper.

To know more about our company and other blogs, just click the link below.