Development Tools for Success

If you're considering building a mobile app, you're stepping into a world of limitless opportunities. However, navigating this vast landscape can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to choosing the right tools and technologies for your project. Making informed decisions at the outset can save you time, money, and countless headaches down the road. This is why choosing an agency who has already carried out endless research into the best tools available, and who is highly experienced in using them effectively is key to your success. In this article, we will explore what Coderus considers to be the best tools for building a mobile app. Firstly, let’s look at some development tools:

Development Tools

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration (CI) is an invaluable tool for mobile app developers because it streamlines and enhances the entire development process. CI involves automatically building, executing tests and performing static analysis before changes can be merged into the main codebase. As well as automating the deploy process to the Apple App Store or Google Play. This practice helps catch and fix issues early in the development cycle, ensuring that the app remains stable and reliable. By automating the integration and testing of code changes, CI reduces the risk of introducing bugs and conflicts between different parts of the app. It also promotes collaboration among team members, as everyone is working with the latest codebase. CI pipelines provide immediate feedback on the quality of code, allowing developers to address issues swiftly. Overall, CI not only accelerates development but also improves the app's overall quality, making it an indispensable tool for mobile app developers in delivering robust and efficient applications to users.

While all the major remote repository providers offer a free tier. CI pipelines can be time consuming to setup. Providers like Bitrise or Xcode cloud can do a lot of the configuration as well as providing higher spec machines that free providers.

Here at Coderus we have an in-house Jenkins infrastructure combined with Proxmox containers that allows us to easily scale the number of available nodes to ensure developers can get their build completed quickly. We have custom pipeline integrations to speed up the development lifecycle.

BLE Sniffer

A BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) sniffer can be an invaluable tool for debugging the interaction between a piece of physical hardware and a mobile app. It allows developers to monitor the communication between the hardware device and the app in real-time, capturing data packets exchanged over Bluetooth. This visibility into the Bluetooth communication layer can help developers to confirm that the correct messages are being sent and received and that they match the specification. It can also help identify issues such as packet drops, incorrect data formatting, or inconsistent data transfer rates, which might not be apparent through traditional debugging methods. By analysing the captured data, developers can pinpoint the root cause of connectivity problems, protocol violations, or other issues that may be causing the hardware and mobile app to behave unexpectedly. This detailed insight provided by a BLE sniffer streamlines the debugging process, accelerates troubleshooting, and ultimately leads to more reliable and stable interactions between the hardware and the mobile app.

Wi-Fi Sniffer

Similar to the BLE Sniffer, a Wi-Fi sniffer allows developers to monitor and analyse network traffic generated by the app in real-time. This capability is crucial for detecting and diagnosing network-related issues such as latency, packet loss, and inefficient data transfer. By scrutinising the data packets exchanged between the app and external servers or devices, developers can identify performance bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities, and data transmission errors. This detailed insight aids in optimising network requests, ensuring efficient data transfer, and enhancing the overall reliability and speed of the app. Furthermore, a Wi-Fi sniffer can help uncover potential security concerns, such as sensitive data being sent in plaintext, allowing developers to implement encryption and other security measures proactively.

Android Studio

Android Studio stands as the ultimate choice for developing Android apps for several compelling reasons. Firstly, it's built on top of IntelliJ IDEA, a feature-rich and powerful development environment known for its versatility and robust capabilities. This foundation equips Android Studio with a string foundation for Google to build on top of to provide Android developers with specialised tools tailored to Android development. Android Studio offers essential debugging features, making it easy to identify and resolve issues swiftly, which is essential for efficient app development. Its performance monitoring tools are invaluable for optimising an app's efficiency and resource usage.

Google recently rolled Studio Bot, their AI pair programming assistant to more countries. Promising to speed up a developers workflow by writing code snippets and answering questions.

Not to be overlooked is Android Studios integration with the Gradle Build system. Allowing tasks to be run from the IDE. Code completion in .kts files and syntax highlighting.

Recent releases have added tooling to support the adoption of Jetpack compose such as support for reviews and the ability to deploy previews to a device, animation viewer and live edit all aimed at making developers more productive.

Xcode

Xcode, Apple's integrated development environment (IDE), offers a range of indispensable features for developers crafting applications for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS and soon, visionOS. Among its standout capabilities are robust debugging and performance monitoring tools, which are vital for ensuring the quality and efficiency of apps. Xcode's debugger is highly sophisticated, allowing developers to easily identify and rectify issues in their code, greatly expediting the development process.

Furthermore, Xcode continually introduces cutting-edge features to enhance the development experience. In 2019 Apple introduced SwiftUI, a declarative framework for building user interfaces that simplifies and accelerates app development. One of the highlight features this year is the new string catalogue. This features a new UI with the original text displayed alongside the translated text, enabling easier localisation of applications. It also shows how much of the app has been translated in that particular language.

Xcode also offers real-time previews, making it easier for developers to see how UI changes will appear on various Apple devices. The integration of Metal and Metal Performance Shaders allows developers to create graphically intensive applications with ease, tapping into the full potential of Apple's hardware. Additionally, with TestFlight integration, Xcode facilitates seamless beta testing and distribution of apps to a wider audience. It is also heavily integrated with Apple's Xcode Cloud service, enabling developers to run CI tasks and view test results right from Xcode. These features, combined with its debugging and performance monitoring capabilities, solidify Xcode as an indispensable tool for building high-quality, high-performance applications across Apple's ecosystem.

Android and iOS Devices

Testing mobile apps on physical devices before release is essential for ensuring a seamless user experience and addressing potential issues that may not be evident on the iOS simulator or Android emulator.

While simulators are useful for initial development and testing, they have limitations. The Android emulators run a version of android which does not include the modifications that manufacturers like Samsung, Xiaomi or OnePlus make to their devices. Which can affect app performance or event if it works correctly at all.

Physical devices provide a more accurate representation of real-world usage scenarios. For instance, device-specific hardware, such as GPS, accelerometers, bluetooth hardware? and cameras, can behave differently on various phone models, even across the comparatively smaller range of iOS devices. Moreover, performance issues, like memory consumption and battery drainage, may only become apparent when running an app on actual hardware. Additionally, network conditions, connectivity, and device-specific quirks can impact app functionality. Therefore, thorough testing on physical devices allows developers to identify and fix these real-world issues, resulting in a more reliable and user-friendly mobile app upon release.

Cloud/Embedded Tools

Visual Studio:

Microsoft Visual Studio is a robust integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft, designed for software development. It consolidates essential coding tools like code editors, compilers, and debuggers into a singular cohesive platform.

Visual studio has the capabilities to enhance productivity through features like intelligent code completion and automated refactoring. Paired with its advanced debugging capabilities, developers have the tools available for fast and accurate error resolution. The IDE has plugin support where experienced developers customise the IDE for their needs. With an emphasis on team collaboration and version control, streamlining interactions on collective projects amongst the team in one place. This consolidation leads to streamlined development, increased productivity, and rapid error detection and correction reducing the likelihood of bugs and code inconsistencies.

While the Community edition of Visual Studio offers foundational features at no cost, it lacks many advanced tools found in the premium tiers. Opting for higher-level editions ensures developers access a broader suite of capabilities, enhancing productivity and expanding potential development scenarios.

MPLAB:

Similarly to Microsoft Visual Studio , MPLAB is an integrated development environment (IDE) however, from Microchip and is tailored specifically for microcontroller development. MPLAB provides a suite of coding, debugging, and programming tools specifically optimised for to ensure high quality code:

• The MPLAB Code Configurator auto-generates setup code, ensuring a standardised and error-free boilerplate code.
• Real-time debugging with MPLAB ICD allows for instant code evaluation, minimising runtime errors and promoting cleaner code structures.
• Integration with MPLAB Xpress Cloud-based IDE offers accessibility and version control, fostering collaborative coding practices.
• The built-in Logic Analyzer and MPLAB XC Compilers support efficient coding but also optimise for performance and readability.

By utilising these tools across both Mobile and Embedded, experienced developers can write code faster which is both robust and efficient. This streamlined approach ensures fast delivery while guaranteeing that clients receive a solution of the highest quality.

Testing tools:

• TestRail is used by the QA team as our Test Management system. This tool holds all our test cases, test suites and test runs for all our projects. This allows us to ensure all our projects are fully tested with a full history of all previous test runs for each different milestone. The testruns can be assigned to different QA engineers so they see what testing they need to complete and leads are able to see their progress. Project Requirements can be linked to test cases to help show maximum coverage. Test runs can also be linked to defects and reports can be produced to show a test run summary.
• Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer, or an application that captures packets from a network connection, such as from your computer to your home office or the internet. We use this tool to capture data flowing through our network and to devices (such as headphones, speakers) using all the common protocols, wire Ethernet, wireless IEEE, Bluetooth and USB. Using this tool we are able to confirm the correct protocols are being used and the packets are being sent securely and are encrypted.
• Appium is used to complete automated mobile testing. This allows us to complete fast automated testing after each deployment. Although this can be time consuming to set up in the first place, it reduces the need for regression testing to be completed manually.
• Selenium is used to complete automated website testing. Like Appium it can be set to run after each deployment and reduce the need for manual regression testing.
• Postman is used to complete API testing. API requests can be created in a shared workspace, allowing a number of users to access the same collections of requests with predefined environment configurations. Tests can also be designed to confirm the correct response is being received from the API. Postman also allows performance tests, allowing you to simulate fixed numbers or ramp up of virtual users over a test duration.

Building a mobile app for your business is an exciting endeavour, but it's crucial to make well-informed choices from the very beginning. By partnering with Coderus, you can have the confidence to know that we’ve considered all the key factors to ensure your App is built with the best possible tools available, setting strong foundations for a successful project. Working with an agency also means that you don’t have the worry of additional software licences or staff training costs, as we cover this for you.

The tools you choose can greatly impact your app's performance, scalability, and user satisfaction, and we ensure this is taken into account throughout the development process, teaming right tools and meticulous attention to detail, ensuring your mobile app has the potential to stand out in a crowded marketplace and provide value to your users.

If you’d like to discuss how Coderus can help work with you to bring your app ideas to life then get in touch: We’d love to hear from you.