Native Development

[melleb]

Ahoy, intrepid developers!

If I might be so bold as to momentarily distract you from your compiling, I have a favour to ask. (Yeah, she just got here and she's already asking for favours…)

We’ve been working on a project here at the Stately BlackBerry Manor, and I would love to get your input. We're building what we’ve colloquially referred to as “DevTube”, i.e. a video channel of developer-centric content. So I figured it would be a good idea to actually ask you what you'd like to see on it.

Would love to know what types/lengths of content you'd be interested in, what you'd like to learn about, who you'd like to meet, what kinds of things make you stop watching and go back to Reddit…

Some general categories we're thinking of so far:

• Developers! Folks who are building cool apps, their companies, processes, products, etc.
• Technical product demos. How does new stuff being launched make your development life easier, better, faster, etc.
• Screencasts. How to do…?
• The business of apps. Lots of you are building businesses out there. What are the best practices, success stories, etc.
• Meet the team. Lots of you know lots of us. At least online. Get to know Dev Relations and other relevant RIM folk and who can help you get stuff done.
• Event coverage. Keynotes, interviews, etc. You're seeing this stuff on the dev blog and whatnot, just want to have it in one place.

I can't guarantee we'll be able to implement everything you throw out there, but geek-friendly and fluff-free is my ultimate goal.

Much obliged,

Melle

Cross-posted to: Java, Web and WebWorks, Adobe AIR, and Cascades.

[Marc_Paradise]

Honestly what I'd love to see is transcripts for any tutorial videos and screenshots.

While it's great to have the videos, it's often a lot faster (and quieter!) to work through a textual tutorial
While it's not as sexy as videos are... a lot of this type of content is more easily digested as text and code snippets than watching someone speaking about it.

With that said, it'd be cool to see (or read transcripts of ) things like marketing of apps, and technical how-tos of advanced topics

[sucroid]

Transcripts are great for those who have hearing difficulties. 

I think it would be great to have a tutorial series that shows the development cycle from start to finish: from setting up the IDE, getting the signing keys, exporting release build, and submitting the product on AppWorld vendor portal.  I already know how to do all these but I remember It took me a while to figure out all the steps.

[melleb]

Interestingly, one of the first pieces of feedback I got from a dev friend was that he always preferred blog posts and the like to video, because watching video doesn't lend itself well to multi-tasking, and it's harder to jump in and out to get what you need while working.

Transcripts hadn't occurred to me, but good call.

[smcveigh]

I was really happy with the way the Jam sessions were transcribed and available as audio + visuals.

The nice thing about video is that you can sometimes get an expert to just stand up and start talking with little or no prep and can transcribe later.  Conversely, asking the same person to write up a document requires additional prep, planning, polish, etc.  Certainly more than the amount of time they could probably just talk for. (subject to editing of course!)

I'd be fine with someone roving the offices with a camcorder and cornering developers occasionally, asking for a 5-minute demo about something, or a 5-minute chat about some new tech that's been released, or a how-to, etc.

Call it 'guerilla devblog'

Cheers,

Sean

[sucroid]

Yes.  The BB10 Jam video transcripts were very useful.  They helped me decide when I could just fast forward to the points that I am looking for.

Video helps in identifying which menu item to click for instance.  Sometimes, reading about what to do takes a bit of mental translation to find the right action to perform on the screen.

[MikePembo951]

Yes, the most difficult part of developing for playbook and BB is starting and learning how the IDE (since most and myself have probably come from visual studio etc.) works, how to use debug tokens and apply them, exporting, debugging, (+ building these) and submitting

(my opinion anyway)

[aghattas]

Honestly what I'd love to see is transcripts for any tutorial videos and screenshots.

While it's great to have the videos, it's often a lot faster (and quieter!) to work through a textual tutorial
While it's not as sexy as videos are... a lot of this type of content is more easily digested as text and code snippets than watching someone speaking about it.

With that said, it'd be cool to see (or read transcripts of ) things like marketing of apps, and technical how-tos of advanced topics

[mzex]

My opininon is also that videos of howtos regarding IDE features, settings, debugging, signing, deploying and that kind of stuff would be very usefull for newcomers to this platform.

And all that for Win, Linux and Mac.

It took me significant amount of time to learn all that specific stuff.

[jtegen]

All the schema/messages/types for the invocation framework. How and what can launch and use contacts, email, calendar, maps, browser, etc. How to publish your app's schema/messages/types for other apps to leverage.