Takeaways from Hsin-Chuang's First App Contest

Published on May 19, 2016 JavaGithubWireless RouterNotesAndroid

This was my first time entering an app-building contest as part of a team, and I learned a lot. Here are some takeaways to share:
1. If a team has no discussion or even arguments, it may mean nobody is really thinking hard.
I believe that once people have genuinely thought things through, everyone develops their own ideas, and when those ideas meet in discussion they either merge or collide, leading to a more complete, integrated goal that everyone shares a stronger consensus to achieve. If there’s no discussion and no friction, it may mean people are swallowing their objections or aren’t thinking things through, which isn’t a good thing.
2. The right mindset for online collaboration is extremely important.
For online collaboration platforms like Git, Trello, Teamviewer and so on, beyond the technical know-how of how to operate them, what I value more is the mindset.
One aspect of that mindset: treat your own problems as everyone’s problems, and everyone’s problems as your own; likewise, share your solutions with the group, and treat others’ answers as references too.
The other aspect: share your status immediately, just like people constantly post on Facebook or Plurk—treat your CODE like a great meal or a nice view worth sharing. For particular problems, you can even TAG someone to ask for help.
These two points are the most important things I learned building an app as a team this time. Maybe the result wasn’t that great, and the program we built still has plenty of room for improvement, but I think this experience really helped me a lot, and I hope sharing it can be of some help to you all!
Full app demo video:

Here are some photos to share:
The finalist trophy