Debugging is always such a hard thing. And in the mobile world, it's a lot harder. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience with it.
And then a tool that I've discovered that I think will be useful for you guys, they'll be helpful to be able to do remote debugging, do crash reporting, and get feedback from your users.
And I wish I had this tool and this help.
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Transcript Of The Video:
John Sonmez: John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com. And today, I want to talk to you about something I wasn't quite sure how to present this to you, but I want to talk to you about something really, really serious, which is remote logging. Yes, I know. I know you're not supposed to talk about religion and politics in remote logging, but I'm going to do it in this video.
If you guys are just joining me for the first time, I'm John from simpleprogrammer.com. On this channel, I teach you the soft skills you need to become a better developer and a better human being. And if you haven't already, check out my book. I don't have it with me, but it is Soft Skills, Software Developer's Life Manual and the Complete Software Developer's Career Guide. You can find it in the links up here. All right.
What I want to talk about today is my app development process. And some of the biggest struggles that I faced during that. I don't know if you're interested in becoming a mobile app developer. If you are a mobile app developer, you're going to want to hear this because I got a solution for you. But I don't know if but one of the first things that got me started as an entrepreneur was a mobile app I built called Pace Maker. Okay? And it doesn't check your heart. What it does is it keeps you on pace when running. So, I developed this app. I develop it in iOS and an Android version of it. I did the Android version first. I learned Android development, learned iOS development for this. And one of the things that probably, actually, caused me to eventually stop working on the app was the bugs and the crashes.
So, here I am. I develop my version on the app, test it on my Android phone. I would go for a run, and it would work. And then, when I did the iPhone version, I got my iPhone as well, and I put it on there. And I would put it on the app store, and I would get all these people that would complain to say, “It's not working. It's not loading for me. It just crashes.” And it's really, really frustrating because I don't have any way to even communicate with these people. They bought it from the app store. They've downloaded the app. I don't have any communication. The only communication that I have is if they happen to email me.
So, anyway, I have run across a company, actually, they contacted me. The company I'm going to show you right here is called Bugfender. And I don't do a lot of advertising on this channel, not a whole lot. I sell my own products and stuff like that. But let me tell you something about this. I read through the story, the origin story of this software. And it was really, really interesting. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. MRR, monthly revenue, big thing. It's hard to start a business, all right? But these guys, they really have put together a solid product, and I want to see them become successful. So, I'm going to tell you about their product. Now, if you guys don't want to hear about a mobile app reporting remote logging, crash reporting, that's totally fine. But you know what? If you do any kind of app development, and not just app, they do it for web as well, if you look at the platforms that they support here.
It is iOS, Android, and JavaScript. So, you can actually use it in JavaScript, React, Unity even. All of these places. This is a really, really cool app that solves a problem. So, what does Bugfender do? What Bugfender does is this. You just put a little bit of instrumentation code into your application. So, you're making your mobile app, and it works… Let's say, for iOS. When your iOS app starts up, you initialize, basically, Bugfender in there. And then, what you do is you have access to the logs, and you can log anything that you want. So, again, remember, my whole problem with my application with my Pace Maker app… And especially, I was using GPS and stuff like that. So, things could crash. People are using different networks, wifi. How many different distributions of Android and phone models were out there?
Well, I couldn't tell who the user was and what they did. But with something like Bugfender, all you got to do is you go in there and you instrument it. You could do it for your Android app, for your iOS app. And then, they have a web interface where you can see exactly what's happening in real time and also offline. So, I thought this was really cool. If you check out this article, Jordi, one of the founders of Bugfender, and I believe, [Alexi 00:04:27], they have their whole story here. And it's really cool. It's a really cool story. As an entrepreneur, I really appreciate this story and what they did to figure this out and to build this application up.
So, if you are interested at all in mobile app development, go check this out. Go check out the story. And I think you'll find that their company is really cool. It's remote logging. It's crash reporting. You can get user feedback from it as well. And it's fairly well-priced too. So, you look at the pricing here. They have a free version. But the basic version is going to cover most things here. You got seven-day log retention, five team members here. And then, they've got pro version here, and then, a premium version. Pretty decent pricing for this, depending on how big, how many obligations that you're utilizing.
So, anyway, guys. Go check it out. I put a link down below here. There'll be a link in the [inaudible 00:05:23] as well for Bugfender. And like I said, really solid company and good software. I wish I had this when I was doing mobile app development. Like I said, it's really helpful to be able to know what users are doing. And this is a unique problem, I think, for mobile apps. Actually, the two founders of Bugfender, they both stumbled on this because they both had the same problem. And I know that most people that are doing app development have this exact problem, problem that I just described, which is that you've got the apps out there in the wild.
You've got people with all different kinds of devices and configurations, and you can't get communication with them. You need to know. You need to see the log files, to be able to see that in real time, to be able to go through all the devices that are using your application and all the users, and to be able to see what the logs are, see what they're doing, see why they crashed, to get all that analytics and data. So, so critical, so important.
So, go check it out. Again, bugfender.com. I'll put the link down below. Make sure you click that link, and tell him you came here from Simple Programmer. But yeah, I appreciate you guys. And again, like I said, I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit. These guys put together this company, bootstrapped this thing, just like I have with my companies. And so, if you're looking, if you're doing mobile app development, at least give it a try. Go support them and check it out. I don't think you'll be disappointed, honestly.
And let me know. Let me know if you check it out. If you're using Bugfender already, leave a comment down below and spread the word because I think this is something that everyone can use. And sometimes, it's hard as an entrepreneur to get the marketing message out there. And so, if you guys can help spread that word for them, I'm sure they would appreciate it. I would appreciate it, as an entrepreneur. It's just a good thing to be able to do. And it's so useful, right? It's such a useful application that I think that everyone who's doing mobile app development could use. So, all right, guys. Talk to you next time. Take care.