Messaging and audio updates

Version 2.36 is now available and includes some great new features !

Push notifications messaging from the CodeNeighbor system is now available. System messages can be delivered for updates and information. This update allows CodeNeighbor to release timely updates and stay connected with you and your teams. Communication is key to success and these updates provide a pathway to our next steps which is chat messaging support.

The main component of this remote notification setup is the Apple Push Notification service, also known as APNs. APN in actuality is a collection of services that allows the developer to send the notifications from their server to the targeted iOS devices. The APNs are robust and secure methods to establish a connection between the provider server and individual Apple devices. 

Audible and speech cues have also been added to complement any messaging. Incoming messages from the system can provide audio cues when they arrive and we are interested in evaluating the role audio cues can play in improving engagement and outcomes in the context of messaging. This feature does provide the ability to be disabled should one wish to turn it off.

Whiteboarding … lets play with paint

Version 2.01 is released and with it the new feature of white boarding. This initial release of drawing capabilities is just the beginning .. the whiteboard is where you can draw out ideas, sketch, fingerpaint … and eventually collaborate in real time.

This introduction will continue to have updates providing for more feature rich capabilities – adding shapes, text and the usual suspects. Planning has begun to use this new feature as the initial real time collaboration for individuals and teams to use a whiteboard with other collaborative features to follow.

We hope you like this simple addition … take it for a spin … even to do some simple finger painting !

Version 2.0 is in the store !

We hope you have been trying out CodeNeighbor and now an updated version, 2.0, is available in the store !

As always, we are continuing to apply new feature updates to ensure this application provides the developer community with great capabilities and as always, your feedback is welcome and requested.

Version 2.0 adds an exciting new feature: CRON (no, not TRON, which would be cool – stay tuned, ya never know if a light cycle might appear). CRON is available in the automation section and provides that feature which may not be available in corporate environments and includes some capabilities not available in the traditional CRON as well.

CRON is just the first of more automation capabilities on our roadmap and a sneak peak of that is adding a visual workflow builder and API creation, testing and deployment to a Swift server as well … so stay tuned.

Script invocation … all the rave

CodeNeighbor has introduced a new item in the dashboard: scripts. With scripts (currently only unix scripts, but other supporting coming soon for Swift, Python, etc.), invocation of the script can be done within the application.

Wait, that’s not a big deal, right ? Actually, it is just the first phase of a planned automation in early 2024 … the ability to run a flow using scripts, code and built-in functions to perform custom workflows. The flows could support code and application generation, data transformation, API testing .. seemingly endless possibilities.

This is part of a larger vision for what CodeNeighbor can do for you and your team. Imagine, using (another soon to be introduced feature) a schedule, to search for artifacts matching a criteria, deciding if the results should be further analyzed for useful code snippets, notifying the team at 2am of those findings.

Clearly, there is a large roadmap ahead of us, but we believe this will open more ideas and creative solutions that not only save time but improve communication and collaboration.

We are excited to be planning these upgrades and welcome others to be involved, provide beta testing and feedback … and those that do would be provided with level upgrades for their efforts. Stay tuned.

MacOS version – now available in the Mac Store

An update to the MacOS version of CodeNeighbor is now in the Mac Store. This version is more suitable to working on apps from a desktop perspective, provides better integration with desktop content, includes features not yet available in the web version and is part of a roadmap that will bring fantastic integrations and automation for the development community.

Swiftly play on the playgrounds

Playgrounds are fun !

The playgrounds in Xcode was a very welcome addition – saving time and testing simple functions. Xcode allows for previewing your mobile projects, nearly live. The ‘playground’ capability in CodeNeighbor is not a 100% mirror of what Xcode provides, but does allow for non UI (for now) Swift code invoke actions and shows the results, or errors (hopefully not).

The next version of this will support UI invocations and screen captures of your creative masterpieces.

Collaboration – lets go team !

Working in a ‘silo’, as they call it, is more normal these days now that we are (mostly) not in the office daily. Even so, when we get a user story or task, off we go to the races and start work. There are times however, when we need to work with others for inspiration, share ideas and code (snippets) and to discuss the latest episode of Stranger Things.

This is where collaboration comes in – between sharing assets with team members (and building team member groups), engaging in chat and now, whiteboarding, collaboration takes team interaction to a whole new level. CodeNeighbor has started the journey of interactive whiteboarding amongst teams and this will truly enable remote workers to stay in touch, share ideas and collaborate easily.

Get out your markers (virtual ones) and start planning to share with your team !

Visual development – seeing is believing

Flow based design and development is nothing new, from early versions of workflow tools to ESB platforms, they execute payloads with seemingly ease. However, that’s typically where the magic gets lost – there is always a complicated side of the house when the work gets started.

CodeNeighbor is building a toolset for visual development that embodies the drag and drop and visual design metaphor with ease of use. The secret lies in …. (well, we cant tell you too much about the magic) keeping things simple. There are flows that aide in building functions, classes, projects. Then there are flow for designing models, services and testing.

Lest not we forget about the flows that are used for handy, daily automated things, like visual search, scheduled messaging and … well, all will be laid bare soon. For now, be patient while the paint dries and know that when the time is right, we will notify our neighborhoods for these great new features ! As always – stay tuned !

— Pete (landlord)

Custom type – sort of

Snippets are the backbone of CodeNeighbor – they define a one-liner, a function or something larger. When CodeNeighbor started out, the concept of snippet types grew and this outpaced the system defined types where it all began.

As the imagination and creativity of our neighbors increased, it became clear that there was a need to allow them to create custom snippet types, to better organize and categorize what they were saving. To that end, there now exists the ability to create custom snippet types which enables snippets of any type.

As always, you feedback on this new feature is welcomed and we hope you can use this new capability to its fullest! Happy type-ing.

Code generation – no code / low code

This whole business of ‘low code / no code’ has its merits – for non developers. Those of us who are ardent fans of coding, dismiss this thinking as ‘for others, not ourselves’ … but is that totally true ?

The concept of no code / low code stems from those business models that aim to entice non developers into believing that an app can be built with no or very little code, OR, those pundits that aim to push a new paradigm that this approach represents less effort / time / cost and improved speed to market.

Well … some of that does ring true, but what CodeNeighbor believes is that code generation is in this camp as it relates to the effort, or lack of, using templates. Generating code is nothing new – many tools and IDE’s have been providing this for years, but typically the boilerplate mutators or syntactical structures such as loops or blocks. While all of this is fine and good, what is really valuable, is building using structures of code that have defined purpose and can be connected like Lego blocks.

Imagine, if you will, the ability to connect the core architecture aspects of an app together with blocks that work, have been tested and can easily be plugged in (pluggable architecture) into the scheme of things and allow the developer to focus on the really important stuff. In that sense, this does provide an aspect of low code / no code, allowing you to spend you valuable time on the high brow stuff.

This is by no means simple, but it is also not rocket science (does anyone actually attend school for rockets these days ?) … so stay tuned for what lies ahead.