Why I chose Windows Phone development for my next big thing...

Why I chose Windows Phone development for my next big thing...

people asked me. My answer is why not? Then they go wining around saying that many softwares comes from Microsoft are crap. Complex software license, damn pricey, and for friends that comes from development background, some say Visual Studio sucks. Its funny though, since almost 80% of my developer friends use Visual Studio day in, day out.

Then I wondered, if Windows sucks, and Visual Studio is buggy, then why are you using it in your day to day work? Why don't you use other platforms... ?! Stop wining peeps! There are always choices out there to choose from. Don't like it? Then switch and move on. No one is forcing you...

Windows is buggy - that I acknowledge, but that was then. I think Windows has come a long way till now. XP was a great product, but Vista wasn't. Win7 is awesome. Win8? Well, it is better in many ways, and not in others. Radical changes especially with the new "Modern UI" language. Its good to see a lot of changes in the new OS, especially moving away from the desktop environment. But too radical isn't good either. On the other hand, unifying the OS platform to become one is a big step ahead and a huge challenge. Something that IOS has accomplished very well several years ago.. - kudos Apple!

Windows Phone is unique. There's no icon to represent apps - Well, the tiles are the "icons". It is different. It lives on top of a concept called Live Tiles. Which I think is a fun to see when those live tiles flips to give me latest information without having to launch an app - It's ALIVE!!!

I know android has something called widgets, but I like live tiles better.

So again, why Windows Phone development? For simple fact is because, I can use C# and xaml to write apps on it. Since I already know WPF and Silverlight, it makes perfect sense to me to jump to Windows Phone app development. Hence, the learning curve was not so steep. MVVM can be applied in almost the same manner as WPF and Silverlight - with some distinctness which I'm not going to talk about here.

The only thing that needs some learning is understanding the wp's application lifecycle, frames and pages, navigation and non linear navigation, transition behaviors from a page to another, backstacks, and so forth. Sounds like its a lot to learn right? Actually it isn't at all. Of course there are some limitations to Windows Phone xaml technology. It doesn't have the power of WPF, but hey, I could create an app with less time. That helps you know...

So my journey started in November 2013. It was the time where I got serious with win phone app development. I joined Nokia's win phone developer's program, and got a year worth of Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone, plus a year worth of Windows Phone Store app account to publish apps. All is good right? No, you need to have a device to test run your app.

Worth mentioning I got myself a Nokia Lumia 920. Proudly to say during that time, I ordered prior to the Nokia Lumia 920 launch in Malaysia!!

Its a piece of awesome device I would say, and I love using it everyday...

From Nov 2013 till now - March 2014, that's like 4 months. I've learned many things in developing an app. Proudly to say, my first test app called Peek-a-boo is already in trial phase at 0.5.0.0. 

Now, I'm coding a new app as well, called Memorizer. More on Memorizer in my future blog post.

In short, within four months of playing around with win phone dev, I've already made a lot of progress. It's only time when I can publish my apps... 

p/s: Apart from Peek-a-boo and Memorizer, I've outlined like 3 or 4 more in the pipeline... 

Full Steam Ahead! 

Hello World...

Never in my life wanted to start a blog. I used to write in diaries during my schooling years. Then I stopped because i thought it was time consuming.

Every day my friends urged me to start a blog, in which I did - only after a few attempts at it, then I felt it was useless again.

Time flies like no one's business, and the more I tried to "stop" myself from blogging, the more I realize that I need to.

So here I am. It would be interesting to see what I can write, as I am not a fan of writing down my thoughts.


English is not my first language, so do expect I make mistakes along the way..

Just so you know, I'm Shah Z. S... Shah would be enough to call me. What Z and S stands for? Well, even if I tell you, you most probably can't pronounce it correctly - trust me I know.. :)

Father to a handsome young prince age 4+, and a husband to a very patient wife. Gratitude goes to Allah for granting me a beautiful wife and son.

At work, I'm a full time software developer, at home, I'm a part time software developer, a father and a husband...

C# is the language I know best, although my career started with VB6. So expect me to write about my software development findings in C# language...

It's getting late... time to sleep... till my next post...