Hi, thanks for stopping by and hopefully this blog post will answer the question; NativeScript: "Why Patreon?"
I think it goes without saying that I have been a valuable participant in the Nativescript community since NativeScript was first released. However, for those who don't know who I am, here is a really quick summary. I wrote the book on NativeScript. I currently hold the record for the most developed NativeScript plugins and plugin assists. I created and maintain the community NativeScript web site including the cool plugins library at Nativescript.rocks. In addition I have dozens of in-depth posts regarding NativeScript on my blog as well as innumerable support posts on Google Groups, Slack, and I have one of the highest NativeScript support ratings on StackOverflow. I can continue to go on, but I think from this you get a pretty good picture of what I've contributed.
And here is a small trimmed down list of things I would like to pursue in the future for the NS community.
Blogs:
- How to use Android Extend's properly
- How to do Extend'd events properly in Android JS
- iOS and Android Gotcha's
- Building a AAR from a JAR and/or Source code (Android)
- Building a Full interface plugin in Android/ios (Using a maven/cocoapod)
- Building a Full interface plugin (totally in TypeScript/JavaScript)
- Techniques to optimizing your code
- Angular 2 and using normal processing or interface NativeScript plugins
- iOS & Android Multithreading
Tools/Plugins:
- Shrink the size of deployed APK/IPA size (post-hook tool)
- iOS WKWebView & Safari View Controller
- Android Camera control 2
- PDF control
- Fluent Reports (data driven JS reporting engine)
- Encrypted Key Store access & native encryption routines
- Convert more/all of the Node modules
- Debugging, Design, and Performance tools
- LiveEdit for iOS & better TypeScript support (TSLint)
- Replacing "Observable/ObservableArray/Promises" in NativeScript with RxJS
- Deployed remote updating (i.e. download updates to your app from your server)
NativeScript.rocks:
- Searchable/Filterable/Sortable
- Mobile friendly & Mobile app w/ runnable samples
- Pictures/Animations of interface plugins
- Display docs
What many of you may not know is that I am a totally self employed family man. That's right, I don't have a 9-5 regular paying gig. I'm a husband and father to several kids, with another due in Aug. So, I am at a point where I need to focus in one direction or the other. I've spent a lot of time on the community and I have really enjoyed it. As you can see I have so many great ideas for so many more NativeScript blogs, tools and plugins. But, I also need to take care of my family, so I need to pay the bills. This is where you can come in and help! You can choose to help me build many more free resources in the NativeScript community. By pledging to my Patreon fund. You can show that you appreciate all open source plugins, knowledge, web sites, and finally the support that I bring to our community.
The goals I have currently setup are:
- $100 - A exclusive blog post each month
- $500 - Several exclusive blog posts each month
- $1,000 - A plugin each month, exclusive to patreon's for at least 3 months.
- $2,500 - I'll work on a free book for the community, 3 months exclusive for patreon's
- $4,000 - A complicated plugin/tool for the community, or several simpler plugins per month. (Again exclusive for patreon's for at least 3 months)
Each of these goals will be using your suggestions and/or from my list and voted on by you patreon's; so you can direct the direction and potentially get answers and/or plugins to fill the need you have or see.
This does not mean that if I don't get the funding that I'm leaving. I love NativeScript! We have an awesome community; so I'm sticking around. Rather it just means I will have to refocus the majority of my time on other stuff like generating contracts, making commercial plugins, services, and things like paid training.
I have been been working on transitioning to primarily commercial -- however, I decided to try a grand experiment. I am going to let you as the NativeScript community choose where you would like me to focus my time and efforts...
If you choose to support me; here is my Patreon Link.
Hey Nathanael,
I live your idea!
12$/month is reasonable but I can't afford it at this specific time.
So I'd like to know until when the campaign is open as well as if it was possible to have a more "specific" overview (In particular: on Nativescript or what else?) of the offer.
Thanks a lot
Hey Manuel,
Anyone can pledge even $1 a month; there is no set minimum limit. If 500 people pledged only $4 a month, then half the goal would be done, and that would mean I would be focusing half my time on the NS community and on open source projects and helping with other NS related things.
The campaign will stay open; that is the cool thing about patreon, it doesn't have a date of closing. If in 5 years I get up to a specific funding level, then at that point I'll begin doing whatever that goal states.
Now if I understand your question about what NativeScript; well I thought the list I put in the post was pretty good indication; I've had multiple people ask me "when" is iOS support for LiveEdit coming. Or can you do this component; or can you blog about this aspect of plugin development. These are things I can easily do; but they take time to actually do them.
On the what else -- I'm a fairly skilled developer in pretty much every major computer language, and understand the low levels of Windows, Unix, Mac, iOS, Android (and many many other things). In other words there actually is very little in the computer world that I can't do extremely well.
So If the money is in configuring and optimizing servers, then that is what I will be doing. If the money is doing cobol programming on a mainframe, then that is what I will be doing. If the money is doing security review and pen-testing; then that is what I will be doing. None of those have anything to do with NativeScript, which means my focus would be focused outside the NS community. The more time I have to spend focused outside the community literally means less time being part of the NS community, and thereby doing less things to help this community. As for directly impacting the community; I've already evaluated the plugins that I've released and several more that are currently in the works and have decided which plugins will now have a commercial version and which unreleased will now be commercial only. Those that aren't going to have any commercial version, I've halted development on, so things like LiveEdit on iOS won't be happening now without community support.
Does that make sense?
Ehy Natha, thanks for the answer!
I didn't know you could pledge less.
As for Nativescript etc. the point was exactly that: are the articles and plugins all around Nativescript and native API (but still within Nativescript)?
Can you just clarify what you mean by "skilled developer in pretty much every major computer language"? (i.e. which languages?) just curious
As for Patreon, yes, it makes sense. I'll have a look at that as soon as I have a moment (overwhelmed in this period :D)
Manuel,
No problem. Yes, the articles, plugins, tools that I have done in the past and plan on working on if supported would be primarily around NS. However, if the supporter suggested stuff on server side configuration of programs, server side optimizations, nosql or some other code or some other project (like maybe my MiniDLNA w/ passwords project, or maybe fluentReports); then the patreon's are the boss and I would do an article or tool around their highest VOTED suggestions. I suspect the vast majority of things done would be directly NS related, since I was appealing to the NS community.
If I don't get funding, then the stuff I work on will be all over the place. For example today I have a job working on some server side stuff totally unrelated to NS.
As for Languages; some of them I'm a little rusty in; but I can do:
Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Basic, C/C++/C#/ObjC, Swift, Clarion, Lua, Ruby, SQL (several variants), Java, JavaScript, Prolog, Perl, Bash(& SH variants), Asm, PHP, Python, HTML, multiple scripting language, FoxPro/dBase, and I'm probably forgetting several other languages... 😉
I've worked on things like embedded devices, to really large web sites with multiple tiers. Phones to large networks of computers. I've been doing DevOps type work for longer than it has been called DevOps. 😉 So, you can throw me pretty much any project in pretty much any industry and I've either done something similar or can easily do it because of the experience.