<story><title>Show HN: I wrote the book Building Mobile Apps at Scale</title><url>http://mobileatscale.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m excited to share that Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges is out. It&amp;#x27;s my first-ever paperback book and one that is free as a PDF for the rest of the month[1].&lt;p&gt;I had worked for years at Uber, first as a mobile engineer, then an engineering manager. Despite being a mobile-first company, I could not shake the feeling that non-mobile engineers and managers consistently underestimated the complexity of large-scale mobile development. I&amp;#x27;ve been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, &amp;quot;oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it&amp;#x27;s just another frontend, right?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I found myself explaining again and again to PMs, engineers, and stakeholders all the hoops the mobile team needs to jump to ship things in production. How mistakes are very expensive - and thus, we need to ship almost all changes behind feature flags. How the build train means that the changes we make today will take at least 2 weeks to get to prod. How devices being offline is something we need to actively support, and anticipate... and so on. I noticed similar &amp;quot;aha moments&amp;quot; each time. Talking with other mobile engineers in similar environments, they were having similar conversations, and battling similar assumptions on mobile being relatively simple.&lt;p&gt;I had been collecting the numerous challenging areas that I planned to publish as a blog post. After I shared the draft on Twitter[2], I got an unexpected amount of interest in people offering to contribute. The contents became too long for a post, and so this book was born. Several people asked for a paperback version[3], and I decided to create the book in print as well, as I felt the contents warranted it.&lt;p&gt;I hope you find this book useful - both if you&amp;#x27;re a mobile engineer or if you work with mobile teams. And I&amp;#x27;d love to hear any feedback!&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mobileatscale.com&amp;#x2F;#pricing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mobileatscale.com&amp;#x2F;#pricing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;GergelyOrosz&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335305213394251780&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;GergelyOrosz&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335305213394251780&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;elevenetc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335595203411972097&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;elevenetc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335595203411972097&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mgkimsal</author><text>&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, &amp;quot;oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it&amp;#x27;s just another frontend, right?&amp;quot;.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard that before too.  Even before getting in to the various engineering issues between different platforms, if you&amp;#x27;re talking about &amp;#x27;native apps&amp;#x27; - things to go in to an app store - specifically apple... that &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s just another front end&amp;quot; line is beyond laughable.&lt;p&gt;The effort involved in simply packaging up a handful of mobile apps for distribution in app stores - between multiple icons, splash screens, basic device testing... is often a level beyond what people who&amp;#x27;ve not worked in mobile have ever had to deal with it - especially internal &amp;#x27;line of business&amp;#x27; app folks.&lt;p&gt;I say this as someone who&amp;#x27;s only done a small number of mobile apps (some angular&amp;#x2F;ionic years ago), and looking recently, it&amp;#x27;s only worse.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: I wrote the book Building Mobile Apps at Scale</title><url>http://mobileatscale.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m excited to share that Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges is out. It&amp;#x27;s my first-ever paperback book and one that is free as a PDF for the rest of the month[1].&lt;p&gt;I had worked for years at Uber, first as a mobile engineer, then an engineering manager. Despite being a mobile-first company, I could not shake the feeling that non-mobile engineers and managers consistently underestimated the complexity of large-scale mobile development. I&amp;#x27;ve been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, &amp;quot;oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it&amp;#x27;s just another frontend, right?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I found myself explaining again and again to PMs, engineers, and stakeholders all the hoops the mobile team needs to jump to ship things in production. How mistakes are very expensive - and thus, we need to ship almost all changes behind feature flags. How the build train means that the changes we make today will take at least 2 weeks to get to prod. How devices being offline is something we need to actively support, and anticipate... and so on. I noticed similar &amp;quot;aha moments&amp;quot; each time. Talking with other mobile engineers in similar environments, they were having similar conversations, and battling similar assumptions on mobile being relatively simple.&lt;p&gt;I had been collecting the numerous challenging areas that I planned to publish as a blog post. After I shared the draft on Twitter[2], I got an unexpected amount of interest in people offering to contribute. The contents became too long for a post, and so this book was born. Several people asked for a paperback version[3], and I decided to create the book in print as well, as I felt the contents warranted it.&lt;p&gt;I hope you find this book useful - both if you&amp;#x27;re a mobile engineer or if you work with mobile teams. And I&amp;#x27;d love to hear any feedback!&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mobileatscale.com&amp;#x2F;#pricing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mobileatscale.com&amp;#x2F;#pricing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;GergelyOrosz&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335305213394251780&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;GergelyOrosz&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335305213394251780&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;elevenetc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335595203411972097&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;elevenetc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335595203411972097&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>predaking</author><text>&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, &amp;quot;oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it&amp;#x27;s just another frontend, right?&amp;quot;.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You sold me on the book with this sentence alone.  =)</text></comment>