DEV Perspectives: Interview with the TOP developer on Apps, Trends, and AI

Being in a cozy winter mood, I’ve decided to interview one of our top developers and share his dev perspectives. Talked about frontend, apps, automation, and even ChatGPT. He reminded me of some valuable lessons I’ve started to forget. Let’s dive in ✍️

How would you describe your #development niche? 

🎤 My development niche is the logic of user interfaces and communication between user and server. The middleman in fact. Anything related to Javascript, HTML, CSS, and API calls. Business-wise, I worked in many industries like healthcare, booking systems, edutech and so on.

What are your favorite apps? What would you add if you were part of the development team? 

🎤 I believe the best apps are those we use the most. I am a fan of #Telegram (messenger) and #Glovo (delivery app), plus smart home apps like Alexa. I do think that the simplicity of their interfaces is what people like about them. Messenger like Telegram is updating and adding new features competing with Slack for business purposes. As for changes, I’d like for Telegram to remove the limitations of users in their communities. That way, it’ll be easier to use for corporate teams. 

🎤 I always thought that the best #features are those we lack in daily usage, so in the Glovo app, I’d like to make a single order from different restaurants, so that I don’t have to go back and remember what I haven’t ordered. Convenience is key.   

What is your #expertise (top industries and recent projects)? What did you find most challenging/easy in these apps? 

🎤 I think of myself as an engineer more than a developer because I like structure and architecture. Like Lego but for apps. Mainly, it’s front-end development, and logic of user interfaces although I did backend a few times. For 5 or 6 years, I’ve been building different kinds of websites and setting up communication between the frontend and backend. (15 projects on average)

🎤 My longest project was rather an ecosystem of #apps and websites for the healthcare industry. It was made to automate doctors’ work and patient administration. Also, they planned to integrate AI to help doctors come up with diagnoses, as well as other routine tasks. I worked on user interfaces for doctors (like chat, patient history, etc). The challenge and a great experience was direct communication with clients (doctors) during a live event. It’s so exciting to feel that your app users will have a reliable system. The easiest to do was the layout as it’s quite standard. And in the future it’ll be automated, I believe. Figma already has similar functions. 

🎤 The latest project was a staff management system like a CRM for hotels. It’s the subscription type and can be used in any hotel and soon in restaurants too. In the app, staff has tasks they have to do during the day and some fixed events to go to. Also, it can be edited in case of emergencies or customer requests. 

🎤 The easy trick was to do a landing page, it's muscle memory now. And a little tricky to get used to the different instruments the team uses. It often happens with start-ups as they adopt more flexible and unusual tools in the development process.  

Are there apps that you were amazed at (their functionality, idea, or just developer’s decisions)? Tell us a few examples 

🎤 I’ll tell you about the two I use daily. First is #VScode, a code editor by Microsoft for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. I was surprised to know it was written in Javascript which means I can do something cool like that too. It has so many #extensions that help in my work. Also, anyone can make suggestions on how to improve them, they have open code. (You get the fame of one of the developers listed 😉)

🎤 The second app is #Postman which allows making API calls, in every format, very flexible. Before you make an API, you make a request and see what you get. Like a testing environment with everything needed to see the API lifecycle. It supports most frameworks, WebSockets, etc. 

Name your favorite #trends in development right now and the ones you hate 

🎤 Oh, it’s #ChatGPT in both cases 😆 I am a victim of hype and astonishing technology. Although I prefer to solve any problems myself, I don’t like to waste time when I feel stuck. If I have been looking for a solution for more than 15 minutes I use ChatGPT. Sometimes, it gives the best results, sometimes you need to edit your prompt or make it more clear. It’s spectacular that it answers based on previous information it gets. Probably, it’ll leave Google behind as a system for looking up developer’s information. And such #AI technology makes me a bit anxious. What if it’ll soon replace me? But that’s food for another long talk. 

The #interview turned out to be longer than I expected so would you like part 2? It’s about reviewing code and advice on app architecture 📱