Getting Their Mojo Working: webOS Developer Profiles
Part 3: RustyBrick - An experienced web development shop goes mobile
Established web and mobile device development company RustyBrick decided to turn its expertise in both client and server web technologies to writing apps for webOS, which was one of the first apps made available on Palm® Pre™. The app, Shabbat Shalom, may serve a specialized audience – Orthodox Jews who want to quickly check Shabbos observation times for the week in any location in the world. However, their experience developing a calendar-based app for webOS is broadly applicable if you are thinking about getting started with webOS. We spoke with RustyBrick founder and CTO Ronnie Schwartz.
webOSdev: Tell us about getting started with webOS app development. What was the learning curve like?
Ronnie: We started off as a web development firm, mostly doing back-end development working for small to medium size companies converting their operations and data so everything could be accessed using the web. They’d have corporate data all over the place and we would unify it and put it under one roof, making it easier for remote workers and the whole company to get work done. We never specialized in one industry, because we didn’t want our developers to get bored. And we used all the standard web technologies to do our work: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Java, AJAX, PHP, and so on.
So, the actual coding part of webOS development did not involve any learning curve at all, since we were so familiar with all the web languages. And the nice thing about working with those languages is that most of the problems you can run into have been solved already. They’ve been around long enough that you don’t have to spend a lot of time inventing solutions.
webOSdev: How did you get started with Shabbat Shalom?
Ronnie: On the day Palm announced the Mojo SDK and we could start developing for Palm Pre, we signed up to be a member of the prerelease program immediately. Once we got it, I started playing with it on my vacation.
We weren’t very aggressive about developing an app at first, because we knew we couldn’t submit anything. Once we knew we could submit an app and give it away for free, we started looking for an appropriate app from among the 30 or so we had already done. We had to pick one that was free and somewhat simple to port over and that a lot of people would like.
Just about all our mobile apps are intended for the Orthodox Jew, so we know that area very well. Shabbat Shalom as been one of our top apps, and we thought that would be a good choice.
webOSdev: What general challenges did you face getting Shabbat Shalom running on webOS and Palm Pre?
Ronnie: The background behind many of our apps is the Jewish calendar Zmanim, which tells you the specific times for various religious observations during the day based on sunrise and sunset. When we did previous mobile apps, creating an electronic version of this calendar was a lot of work, and we did not want to have to rewrite it again.
We’ve written server Zmanim apps that are available over the web. We could have written it all over again in JavaScript for Palm and webOS, but since we already had it in PHP, we published an API for the PHP version for Pre to use.
Once we did that, we needed to understand the flicking gesture and other elements of the interface. We used the emulator to get the interface working. Once we understood we had the potential to do this app pretty easily for webOS, we bought a Pre and from that point on we used the device itself to run and test the app.
webOSdev: Since you were using the Mojo Software Development Kit for the first time, there must have been some issues. What were they?
Ronnie: We’re still getting used to the Mojo Framework. Every platform has its challenges, of course. We develop for other mobile platforms, and with one of them in particular it took us the better part of a year hashing out all the issues we had with it. So, no platform is perfect.
And of course I can see that web developers might be a little afraid of mobile platforms and having to learn new languages, but with webOS, as I said, web developers don’t have to learn a new language. Also, a real technical opportunity for web developers with webOS is that the Mojo SDK offers a lot of cool widgets, which are easy to incorporate into an app. There are a lot of components and containers that are easy to drop into an app—the challenge is to figure out which ones to use for what purpose.
webOSdev: Let’s get back to the Mojo Framework. What did you have to get used to?
Ronnie: With Mojo, when you make any calls, a lot of them result in callback calls. That is, you do a call, and it asks you to a callback function that returns something when the call is made. That can make it hard to figure out exactly what is happening inside your app. Say your app hangs—all the call/callback functions can make it hard to isolate the place in your code where the problem exists.
Part of this has to do with the asynchronous nature of webOS. Basically, every call you make has to be asynchronous, that is the call can’t stop the entire system while it waits for a return.
webOSdev: Any general advice to offer developers about webOS?
Ronnie: Yes—I’d say that if you are working on a free app and looking for exposure, Palm gives you a great opportunity. webOS offers very good visibility right now for free apps that you just wouldn’t get on platforms that already have a lot of apps.
webOSdev: Cool. Now to some more generic questions. How many cell phones have you owned in the last five years?
Ronnie: Just two or three, including one upgrade. I don’t buy something new every year.
webOSdev: What do you remember about your first cell phone?
Ronnie: I bought my first cell phone over ten years ago. Typically, I used it strictly for calling people. Texting was big when that came in, but of course everything, including the keyboard, stunk. When smart phones came out, that was a different world. I had a computer, not a phone, and I use if for fun more than as a phone.
webOSdev: When you need to stay up all night doing development, how do you keep yourself going?
Ronnie: Our company is not small, so I have a lot of people at my disposal. Instead of staying up all night, we divide it up among the other people here and get it done during regular hours.
When we started the company, I used to run it out of my room with three computers and the fan on to cool the room down. At that point, we did pull all-nighters, and they were mostly driven by adrenalin.
webOSdev: When you get stuck with a development problem, what do you do to get unstuck?
Ronnie: We have a lot of people here, so usually I can get a problem solved pretty easily by just asking around. If not, then I’ll search the forums to get unstuck. I’ll look for a solution or a workaround. If I can’t find something, I’ll ask a question. And, as I said earlier, Palm is very responsive so usually the problem will get solved fast.
The response we get from Palm employees is amazing, and it has helped us a lot. That’s not true with other vendors, who are not reaching out the way Palm is.
webOSdev: We’re glad to hear that, Ronnie. Thanks for your time, and all the best to you and your continuing development efforts. To thank you, we’ll be sending a copy of Mitch Allen’s book, Palm webOS.
Want webOSdev to interview you, or do you want to help create technical content that might help other webOS developers? Then be sure to submit your app. Once it’s accepted, Palm will tell you what the next steps are.