How was DevFest Siberia 2017

Or why it was necessary to give up all his business and fly to Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk is somewhere between Vladivostok and Moscow.

Who is it? Where is it? Why is this?

For many IT people of Russia, it will be a revelation that there is life not only in Moscow or Leningrad. "In the depths of Siberian ores" is not the first year the biggest festival is held - DevFest Siberia. And of course you will ask me, why is there such a cool one ?, an ordinary conference for developers, geeks, students of IT specialties, such a ten dollars a pack, is held around the world every month! .. And I will answer that this year in the festival was attended by 650 people! There were 6 dozen speakers from all over the world, you rearrange how much valuable information and live communication with the most advanced experts of a kind of activity. The site was chosen very well, it was the Academpark in the Novosibirsk Academgorodok.

What is interesting told

The scatter of reports was quite large. Here you and the web, augmented reality, Android / IOS development, security of banking applications, stories for developers in African countries, of course, did not do without the blockchain ... Often the audience could not accommodate everyone who wanted to enlighten and join the advanced knowledge. Even I had to shake off the dust from my old article about 10 million to add 6 million more to it (now I already have 16 million installations on Google Play) and roll out the report “Ways to monetize mobile applications”. Something tells me that you were not on my report, but do not worry, the whole Internet has stopped waiting for the publication of video clips from the conference on youtube. Arm yourself with knowledge of the English language, since the reports sounded in both Russian and English.

I'll tell you the topic, I learned that localization is becoming a serious problem for large projects. The case does not rest on the search for translators, the translator can be as good as he wants, but he is not at all familiar with the IT context of the country for which he is translating.
All two days of the conference, the room of speakers was available to all comers. Everyone could ask their questions both during the report and after entering the room. The quality of the questions was from “Why my markup is not drawn in the android studio at my self-made button?” To those about which the hackers don’t write to magazines (well, you understand).

What can not be found on the Internet

It was absolutely invaluable for me to meet two speakers from Brazil, Marcelo Quinta and Wilson Mendes. They not only pointed out errors in translating the description of my application into Portuguese, but also conducted a UX review without departing from the cash register (that is, the speaker’s). It turns out that in Brazil, everything is very bad with the Internet, and people coming to the bars at night with their iron just to sit for free Wi-Fi. If you are not surprised, then I will say that in Africa in general the first channel for the distribution of Android applications is bluetooth! Mobile Internet is still there, more expensive than drugs. And in order to replenish the balance of any service, you go to the stall and buy a card of this service. Just like 10 years ago we have, but someone has not even seen these cards to supplement the Internet.

Knowledge of the local context and people's lives, can significantly simplify the promotion of your product in a particular country, and may also push you to think about new applications. Well, to have “your own” person in Paris (or the city of Goiânia in Brazil) is absolutely priceless. Such communication on the Internet is not exactly found.

How did our

I can say for my industry firmly that in the development of mobile software, Russia plays a leading role. To comrades from Yandex taxi, it was not comfortable to solve their task of saving the application settings by other means. Other people's libraries are other people's mistakes. How these libraries are made is also not satisfying the conscience of our engineers. Do not want someone else's bike - write your own! Alexander Efremenkov did a great job with this task, rolling out his library to store the settings in binary format (Binary Preferences).

What is there and why you can see in my review article . Having visited his report, I realized that this article only introduces a serious and well-developed library. Do you want to get protection from banal reading in your application's text editor? - Take this library. Want to learn how to write good code? - study its sources.

Artur Vasilov was talking about the application architecture, and Anton Dudakov was setting up contact between the applications.

Denis Neklyudov traditionally said: “What's new in the new android?”. For me, his reports have become a mandatory checklist. What do I already use and what have I not yet implemented? Each year, points 5-6 are recruited for urgent additions - corrections.

What was for Hackers

For enthusiastic people made Comrade Wire Snark from Nizhny Novgorod.

And he told not a lot is not enough, but about modifying the firmware for Android. The complete modification workflow was described, starting with the receipt of the source code of the firmware and preparation for the modification. We discussed the decompression apk, odex, jar. Also discussed the repackaging process. I think his speech will get thousands of views in youtube after the publication. It was invaluable to talk to him in a more informal setting in the speaker’s room, after the report. Comrade is a Linux fan, so we had one more topic, and we didn’t need a translator (which speeds up the exchange of experience).

Sina Yazdanmehr spoke about fingerprint authentication in mobile banking applications. This report “went off with a bang” to the enthusiastic comrades, now the fingerprint scanner is almost in every slipper, but not everyone can use it correctly and safely.

In parallel with all the reports was a serious and difficult quest Blacklight. His tracks can be found to this day on the Internet. I had no time for quests.

A lover of iron could feel android things and even posobirat robots (although one).
Dark and light beer lovers waited for a party after the first day. We must pay tribute to the organizers, the beer and snack were excellent.

Instead of conclusion

The atmosphere and the level of speakers at the conference were higher than many of the droids I attended. To see beyond the rest, it is better to climb the shoulders of giants. At the last conference of the giants of thought was enough.

During these two days, we managed to ponaprimatur new projects for the year ahead. And if the old ones are improved, then until the next conference I will be busy very closely.