The Renaissance Developer, a term coined by Amazon CTO Dr. Werner Vogels, is a modern polymath thriving in the AI era by combining deep technical skills with broad domain knowledge, creativity, and systems thinking. They represent a shift from purely writing code to solving complex human problems, utilizing AI as a tool while maintaining full ownership, curiosity, and accountability for their work.
A bit about my mobile app developer journey...
I've been attempting to keep up on new technologies that enable developing applications which can be easily adapted to mobile or web based deployments. Cross platform technologies that support Android, IOS and the Web, with a small percentage of modifications required for each platform, were what sparked my interest.
The first two apps that I published were developed using platforms having there roots in web based technologies. They were written in jQuery Mobile and deployed using the cordova.apache.org/ platform. One of the first mobile based platform deployment technologies supporting HTML applications natively on mobile.
The first app didn't require full stack development as it just was a location based app that ran on the phone using the BING maps API, you can see more about that in my older blog posts.. The second app was full stack and used MongoDB in the backend with the API's deployed as Python WSGI servers on the Redhat Openshift platform. Over the years some work was needed to keep the backend up and running but very little was done to modify the HTML/JS frontend UI. This was originally an app built with jQuery Mobile and published in the Google Play store using the Cordova platform to wrap it as a mobile application. The backend had to be supported as the Openshift platform became too expensive for an application that supported one vendor for free. The first move was actually a need to upgrade it form the early Openshift platform to the Version 2 platform. When version two became price prohibitive the backend was temporarily moved to PythonAnywhere and ran fairly well there as it's usage was not demanding. The largest base of users it ever had was about 2000. In the last iteration of backend work I learned how to deploy the python code as Lambda functions (Serverless). The backend was ported to use the following AWS technologies: Amplify, API Gateway and Lambda. It's still active today as a web app which required no modification to move it to a web site since it used HTML & JS. You can read more about that on a few of my earlier posts.
The first two apps that I published were developed using platforms having there roots in web based technologies. They were written in jQuery Mobile and deployed using the cordova.apache.org/ platform. One of the first mobile based platform deployment technologies supporting HTML applications natively on mobile.
The first app didn't require full stack development as it just was a location based app that ran on the phone using the BING maps API, you can see more about that in my older blog posts.. The second app was full stack and used MongoDB in the backend with the API's deployed as Python WSGI servers on the Redhat Openshift platform. Over the years some work was needed to keep the backend up and running but very little was done to modify the HTML/JS frontend UI. This was originally an app built with jQuery Mobile and published in the Google Play store using the Cordova platform to wrap it as a mobile application. The backend had to be supported as the Openshift platform became too expensive for an application that supported one vendor for free. The first move was actually a need to upgrade it form the early Openshift platform to the Version 2 platform. When version two became price prohibitive the backend was temporarily moved to PythonAnywhere and ran fairly well there as it's usage was not demanding. The largest base of users it ever had was about 2000. In the last iteration of backend work I learned how to deploy the python code as Lambda functions (Serverless). The backend was ported to use the following AWS technologies: Amplify, API Gateway and Lambda. It's still active today as a web app which required no modification to move it to a web site since it used HTML & JS. You can read more about that on a few of my earlier posts.
Fast forward to recent times...
Over the past few years I keept aware of what was happening in the world of crossplatfom tech but never really buckled down and did much of a deep dive. You will see a few blog entries about FlutterFlow which I came across about two years ago. I just tinkered with it and wrote a very rudimentary version of a frontend that could use my HTTP API's to pull data from a MongoDB Atlas backend. I never really went too far with it even though I did purchase a license two years in a row, so, you can say I'm an investor in your effort :)
Discovering AI...
I only, say the past few months, started to read about how AI could do most of the coding for developing apps and of course I was skeptical. Without trying it I guessed that maybe it would handle setting up the scaffolding for a project and adding snippits of code but actually developing an app from scratch seemed unlikely.
A few weeks ago I decided to dive in and see what AI could do. The first AI tools I used to do this were Gemini and AWS Q Developer, now Kiro. I wanted to see how I might use them to write my next generation version of the Karaoke program I originally wrote many years ago. I setup a VS Code environment on a Hypervisor VM and started to Vibe code,a new term for me, and set to writing prompts to see what code was generated. I was very impressed, if not AMAZED, at what it was doing! I moved to also using the Kiro IDE and was impressed by the way it incorporated spec driven development. This was only prototyped as a UI and backend was not hooked to it. It was very useful to see how it helped aid in the UX design work. Being able to actually see your pages in action and perform the navigation between them was very useful for developing a UX.
A few weeks ago I decided to dive in and see what AI could do. The first AI tools I used to do this were Gemini and AWS Q Developer, now Kiro. I wanted to see how I might use them to write my next generation version of the Karaoke program I originally wrote many years ago. I setup a VS Code environment on a Hypervisor VM and started to Vibe code,a new term for me, and set to writing prompts to see what code was generated. I was very impressed, if not AMAZED, at what it was doing! I moved to also using the Kiro IDE and was impressed by the way it incorporated spec driven development. This was only prototyped as a UI and backend was not hooked to it. It was very useful to see how it helped aid in the UX design work. Being able to actually see your pages in action and perform the navigation between them was very useful for developing a UX.
The Dreamflow magic moment...
Well, I think this is the section you really wanted to hear about so lets dive in.
I always ask Google/Gemini about the latest way to enhance your development and I started to see lots of AI development platforms being returned in my search..Since I had used FlutterFlow the Dreamflow platform caught my attention.
I stumbled across the Dreamflow Buildathon and thought why not give it a try. I wondered about what would I try to build and of course some form of a mobile app was my only choice. A big mistake I made when I started working on the project was that I felt I needed to develop my backend API first and then dive into Dreamflow and see if I could hook up the HTTP API to it.
I spent over a week learning how to setup a local environment on my VMs to build an AWS Gateway backed by Lambda functions to support my Dreamflow project. I used Kiro to code the backend via its spec driven approach which is very impressive. But, I soon began to realize this effort would likely not succeed so I looked around for some information about what Dreamflow really had to offer. I found an excellent video which explained how Dreamflow could in fact be the fullstack development environment. I thought, wow, why am I coding the backend myself?
I guess you can say I pivoted into producing the app solely focused on using the DreamFlow platform. I wrote up a text based requirements spec and pasted it into the Dreamflow prompt. I had a name for the app so the Dreamflow AI was kind enough to use it. The first version it produced was very impressive. I decided to go with a Supabase SQL backend even though I had no experience with it and a little experience with SQL from a previous job.
At first Dreamflow showed me a UI that only had sample data. We worked together refining the pages and navigation before hooking it up to a real Supabase DB. There have been some very difficult moments but overall I'm very happy and impressed with the first version of the application produced with the help of Dreamflow. Dreamflow as my assistant we worked as a collaborative team and were able to work plow thru the hurdles that encountered to produce a very impressive first version of ScrambleHub. I did have to upgrade to the Pro version as I felt Github access was vital to tracking my iterative development in creation of this application. I also needed a few more credits to get the App finished. All in all the project as first submitted to Google Play took about
It has been submitted in Google Play, and soon IOS, but I have to wait for approval before I can make it publicly available.
For the Buildathon I have provided an internal test link that should allow you to review its functionality. You can read
a synopsis about the app on this website: scramblehub.app/ with a video (basic) as well. No matter what happens with the contest I'll continue to use Dreamflow and produce additonal versions of the app so
that it can find its niche amongst its target audience.
Thank You Dreamflow for motivating me to working into the wee hours of the morning and reigniting my passion for creating software. I feel that my journey has now evolved me into a true 'Renaissance Developer'.
I always ask Google/Gemini about the latest way to enhance your development and I started to see lots of AI development platforms being returned in my search..Since I had used FlutterFlow the Dreamflow platform caught my attention.
I stumbled across the Dreamflow Buildathon and thought why not give it a try. I wondered about what would I try to build and of course some form of a mobile app was my only choice. A big mistake I made when I started working on the project was that I felt I needed to develop my backend API first and then dive into Dreamflow and see if I could hook up the HTTP API to it.
I spent over a week learning how to setup a local environment on my VMs to build an AWS Gateway backed by Lambda functions to support my Dreamflow project. I used Kiro to code the backend via its spec driven approach which is very impressive. But, I soon began to realize this effort would likely not succeed so I looked around for some information about what Dreamflow really had to offer. I found an excellent video which explained how Dreamflow could in fact be the fullstack development environment. I thought, wow, why am I coding the backend myself?
I guess you can say I pivoted into producing the app solely focused on using the DreamFlow platform. I wrote up a text based requirements spec and pasted it into the Dreamflow prompt. I had a name for the app so the Dreamflow AI was kind enough to use it. The first version it produced was very impressive. I decided to go with a Supabase SQL backend even though I had no experience with it and a little experience with SQL from a previous job.
At first Dreamflow showed me a UI that only had sample data. We worked together refining the pages and navigation before hooking it up to a real Supabase DB. There have been some very difficult moments but overall I'm very happy and impressed with the first version of the application produced with the help of Dreamflow. Dreamflow as my assistant we worked as a collaborative team and were able to work plow thru the hurdles that encountered to produce a very impressive first version of ScrambleHub. I did have to upgrade to the Pro version as I felt Github access was vital to tracking my iterative development in creation of this application. I also needed a few more credits to get the App finished. All in all the project as first submitted to Google Play took about
It has been submitted in Google Play, and soon IOS, but I have to wait for approval before I can make it publicly available.
For the Buildathon I have provided an internal test link that should allow you to review its functionality. You can read
a synopsis about the app on this website: scramblehub.app/ with a video (basic) as well. No matter what happens with the contest I'll continue to use Dreamflow and produce additonal versions of the app so
that it can find its niche amongst its target audience.
Thank You Dreamflow for motivating me to working into the wee hours of the morning and reigniting my passion for creating software. I feel that my journey has now evolved me into a true 'Renaissance Developer'.
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