What impact has Ionic had in your life?

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Hey Ions,

Lately, I’ve been gathering and sharing a lot of wonderful stories from you: the Ionic community. Devs that switched to Ionic from native, or are just getting started in mobile development, or are long-time hybrid devs and find Ionic the best solution they’ve used thus far.

Generally, this is in the context of fundraising. By having strong, positive experiences to share from the community, we are better able to fund and support our team to keep making Ionic better.

I would love to open up this thread and get a little more insight into what impact Ionic has had in your career or business. Has it enabled you to work on more interesting projects, or level up in your career, or get something done faster and cheaper?

What were you doing before Ionic?

For fun, I’ll start:

Ionic has enabled me to work on a huge problem with incredibly talented people. It has let me meet so many smart people from all around the world who constantly impress me with their incredible work. It has enabled me to spend each and every day trying to make something that millions use, better. And, it has enabled me to use my preferred toolkit (web technology) to build great apps.

It’s a lot of responsibility, and a hell of a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

So, what impact has Ionic had in your developer day-to-day?

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Hey Max,

Very thankful I have been able to share my story with you before, but for the good of the group I’d love to share again with everyone.

I started learning to code just 3 years ago and released an app using jQuery Mobile after about 5 months of learning in 2012. It was great at the time and exactly what I needed to release a simple side project to the world in hopes of even achieving 100 downloads. 2 years later and many more downloads beyond that, I had an opportunity to make my side project a full time career.

The only catch was that the app needed a huge refresh, and fast. The old code and layout was not going to work going up against much larger competition with presumable dozens of developers in some cases. I learned about Ionic early in 2014 and after writing an app for the DoD in just 8 weeks as a contractor, I knew I had found my own app’s new hope. The opportunity to take my side project full time could only be sealed by promising to rewrite both versions of the app in just 10 weeks. After showing off the advantages and possibilities Ionic could provide, my app and myself were acquired by another app company to take on this challenge and hopefully unleash the full potential of the product.

From the very start Ionic was different. I hadn’t even touched Angular previously but learned through the very clear sample projects and amazing support from the Drifty team on GitHub, through documentation and here within the community. After 10 weeks, TWO versions of the app (Free and Paid) on both iOS and Android had been completed by one person and blew away the previous implementation. The response from users and other developers was incredible.

Thanks to Ionic, our hybrid approach is now a competitive advantage. The flexibility it provides in updating two platforms simultaneously allows us to remain lean and even explore creating similar apps to expand our offerings at the same time. The clear focus on performance and design are allowing us to make great strides.

When I put the app into the hands of other developers all of the time and they are shocked that it is not native. Devs who had written off Cordova in the past were headed home to fire up a new project to give it another go. Ionic is providing hybrid developers with components and tools that native developers have always had access to immediately.

The highlight of all of this was the moment we got the sacred email from Apple asking us for promotional assets. This newly refreshed version Sworkit Pro was to be features in the App Store after the previous versions had already existed in the store for 2 years with no attention from Apple. Clearly things had changed.

After a lot of attention to details specific to Android, (many of which Ionic are now providing), Google Play also featured the app in their store. Since implementing Ionic, our apps have been downloaded over 1 million times in just 5 months with 5 star averages in both stores.

I can’t thank the Drifty team enough for their dedication and hard work. You are enabling an entirely new group of web developers and learners to create amazing apps.

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Hi everyone.

I believe this question alone rightfully shows how different and ‘ahead of the rest’ you guys are!

First, I’m not an app developer, I’m actually just a marketing guy. However, I can’t stand missing opportunities, and where I live there’s not so much good outsourcing on web and app development.

Non-critical projects started to appear in people’s minds, but paying an arm and a leg for an almost static product just because ‘its an app’ made me shiver. That lead me to roll my sleeves and start to design and code, learning a lot along the way.

Tried to learn Java and Objective C, but the time to become prolific was just too much. At that time, PhoneGap was starting, and I understood I would be much more productive. Also, the promise of being platform-agnostic in a near future added some weight to the decision.

My apps current focus is mostly on functional apps for company employees (as an extension of the workplace) and customers (as a direct gateway to access the company). These usually mean apps with lots of views, hierarchies and sections.

I’ve been working with Drupal for some years already - with it I can manage not only website content but also push that content to mobile apps. That proved to be a great combination, but the existing hybrid mobile frameworks where too… poor!

Half a year ago, while reading a newsletter from a known tutorial site, they talked about how Ionic could become the right tool, and I gave it a small tour. After a couple of days I was re-building a major project - the rebuild took 30% less time to code - and that’s because I was learning the “Angular-way” of doing things (thanks for choosing Angular - it is the right companion for Ionic).

Ionic is not just fun, but also very pleasing and rewarding. As you advance in leaps far greater than you use too, it also urges you to explore into other areas you might not have considered before.

Also, quickly prototyping an app to display a concept is also very nice (yes, I’m saying Creator is great)

Finally, I cannot praise enough a couple of things in which Ionic excels:

  • Community support
    Especially when the developers are a part of the community. The speed of evolution increases tremendously when searching and reaching for the forum usually solves your problem.

  • Documentation
    A great time saver, and written in an appealing way. Straight, to the point, immediately usable. Many should learn from this.

  • Development process
    One of the most surprising things was how evolved, reliable and comfortable the Ionic development process is. And so much more productive it turned out to be.

  • Really Cross-platform
    Ionic was the first framework where I could get a reliable output from a platform I didn’t natively support. Very few issues appeared, and all of them related to Cordova plugins. Also, I even managed to use them in ways never imagined (like for interactive kiosks) without issues.

  • Development speed
    I know I already talked about this, but it really is important. Stable and reliable are mandatory, but speed of development is a different matter. When that is attained, the whole process goes smoother, and gives the developer a rewarding feeling of mastering a tool, bending it to his will.

  • Lower development costs
    Don’t know about the rest, but my time is precious - after all, you only live once. So the faster you get results, the cheaper they are, right? Specially if you only do it once and deploy for IOS and Android.

I hope I passed the message, but if not here it is: I truly enjoy Ionic - it made my dev. life easier, happier, funnier, more challenging and more productive.

Thank you guys for your immense wisdom and clear thoughts.

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So great to hear :slight_smile: Congrats on the success, Sworkit rocks and I love that one of my most-used apps is an Ionic app :smiley:

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Thanks so much for sharing your story @urbgimtam. Here’s to lots more success for you down the road!

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Hello,

I used to be a seriously frustrated front-end developer doing client work for the companies I used to work for but 2 months ago I got fed up with that and so I decided to quit my job.

My first encounter with Ionic was more than 2 years ago, when I only saw a youtube video with it, but back then I said that it’s an awesome thing but not yet ready for use in something kickass. So I moved on with my life of doing crap-work( as I prefer to call building WordPress websites now ) and forgot about Ionic until last spring when I picked it up again. But once more, I had to leave it aside as my job at that time required something like 10hrs/day instead of the regular 8.

Since December 17th 2014, without a job and not willing to get one again soon, I turned back to my “unicorn” and started to code the shit out of it. I’m now 1 month away from releasing my app into the stores; fingers crossed guys!

What has Ionic done for me? No idea yet. I guess it’s still pretty soon, but I sure know I absolutely love it. Later this year I want to start an Ionic Usergroup in the town I live in and maybe go to some high schools and universities to spread the news about it.

Much love from Romania!

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I only learned about Ionic in late 2014. Before that I had worked in several other hybrid development platforms, but all of them seemed to lack something, or I spent too much time wrestling with the framework or tools to actually get anything productive done. Even building native code just seemed like a drudge chore with a slow turnaround between coding and seeing results, let alone trying to get my head around a massive SDK.

I usually love trying out new stuff, and when I came across Ionic, I decided to download it and give it a go. I always have three or four app ideas floating around in my head, and my general test of a new framework is to see how much of one of these ideas I could translate into a working prototype, as an assessment of how intuitive the platform/language is.

Well, I was expecting the usual scenario, where I would code up about 50% of my idea, then come across roadblocks and limitations which would lead to another abandoned codebase in a corner of my PC, but imagine my surprise when I found myself able to keep going and going with Ionic. Before I knew it, my first trial idea was a rough working prototype. I thought to myself “Ok, there MUST be a limit here somewhere - lets polish this up into a REAL app”. I mean, even simple apps proved to be difficult to execute in other frameworks, but lo and behold, a few days later I had what I thought would be an app that we could submit to the app stores!

I think what I love most about Ionic is the fact that in a lot of cases, the framework just gets out of the way and lets you execute your ideas. There is just enough functionality there to keep you going, without being too spartan that you get frustrated trying to find out how to achieve something. A huge bonus is the great community that has sprung up around Ionic and Angular JS. This very forum has proven to be a big help to me in the early days (and even now).

I have been cutting code for nearly 30 years now, and many platforms, and it is rare that I come across a platform, SDK or IDE that I think ‘fits’ so well, but I certainly think that Ionic is one of them.

Ionic actually inspired me to “write an app in 30 days” and submit it. Well, I actually ended up writing THREE apps in 60 days once I got into the swing of it ! THAT’s how inspirational it was to work with Ionic. I have blogged in more detail about my challenge and app building experiences on my blog: http://devan.blaze.com.au

Thanks,
Devan (CyberFerret)

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I have learned JS and Angular from scratch :slight_smile: Before i was writing Windows Mobile and CE and some Xamrin apps :slight_smile: Now i’m proud to be part of this community :slight_smile:

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I’ve developed native and hybrid using multiple frameworks just trying to get all these incredible ideas I have off the ground. Never, not once, have I used a framework or tool set that was so intuitive, that works, and that is active.

It’s enabled me to quit my day job, live off of my company alone. It’s SUCH a joy waking up and getting to use this framework to build my apps for my clients and myself. I honestly don’t know where I would be without it.

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I pushed the old sencha stuff away and introduced angular + ionic to my company!
Now we are able to build apps faster with better testing purposes optimized for that.

So we are on a better and future-proofed road.

The community and the ionic-team offers faster reaction time and support!
Great job and rock on!

Greetz the b!

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w00t, love hearing this stuff :slight_smile: keep it coming! :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for sharing!

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Well, I pay my bills writing code with Ionic hahaha this is a big impact. Ionic is a great tool, I hope Ionic get better and better.

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Hi,

I have been using Ionic since it was barely an Alpha. At that time, I joined a company and their phonegap app was J-Query mobile and never made it to the app-store. We first used LungoJS which was Ok but I knew for long term, we needed something more scalable. Then I discovered Ionic. At the time, I did not know Angular or any other JS framework. My project manager and Boss were very reluctant to let me switch.

So i decided to re write an app that took us 3 months in 2 weeks with Ionic and that was it. the Alpha became the Omega as they agreed. Now 1 year later, I have written close to 10 Ionic apps, I am writing a Book on Ionic, started alongside Ryan Hana the Ionic UK group and looking to spread the Ionic crusade across europe.

It has been a career changer for me as I had to pick a native platform to specialise at one point since Hybrid apps were not cutting it, but now Ionic has given me a direction and I will stay cross platform for good. #TeamIonic #TeamCrossPlatform #TeamWebTechnologies

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I leaved a bad job and had to face a dramatic situation with a relative.
It’s how I had an idea and decided to change the world by myself with a mobile application in order to make people closer with their close relationship.

I’m now incubated in a social startup accelerator.
If I didn"t have my Ionic Proof of concept I think I wouldn’t be able to convince this accelerator and maybe change this world in the futur :smile:

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I m using ionic beta ( cant remember :wink: ). Currently I m replacing a lot of native apps with ionic, because of the drastic development speed.
Its always fun to show friends, colleagues, students how fast an app can be created just with a few lines in the CLI and a few lines of Code.

I hope the ionic team keeps its speed in development new features and particularly for enterprise.

I thinks its a good place to say thank you to the fabulous ionic team and the great community.

YOU ROCK!

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My story with Ionic is actually a nice one, but it’s an ongoing story so I will just share what happened until now.

I’m a web developer with 5 years of experience. Last year I was working on a website for someone, technologically it was super-boring. With two friends we decided to try and make an app on an idea we thought good enough for everyone to enjoy it. After some researches, we found the very young but already promising Ionic project, and decided to use it as a basis for our app. We worked on it 3 months before finally realizing our project had a big flaw and wasn’t possible. We were desappointed, but what is important here is that we learned the basics of Angular, Ionic and Cordova development thanks to that.

Shortly after that someone hired me as a CTO for a new, very ambitions startup. I was very excited… But it turned out that was a mistake. Every step on the way showed he made a mistake looking for a technological expert and so, after speaking together about it, we came to the conclusion that I wasn’t needed by the company. That was a tough blow.

But, and there is the awesomeness, speaking with some friends I heard of a project that was starting up, a mobile project… And they were hiring a lead dev to start it. Since I already had the basics of Ionic and Angular, I was able to apply for the position, and they loved so much the idea of hybrid apps that I got the job right away. In the same time I started another custom project with a friend, using Ionic as well.

So here I am, with a great position at a great place with great people, working very happily every day on interesting projects using interesting technologies, and all of this thanks to you guys. Nothing else could have me saying “we can match native look and feel” with the same certainty. So without Ionic, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Expect from me two applications to add to your showcase in the coming 2 or 3 months. Two very performance obsessed, smooth, very user friendly applications. And count on me to recommend Ionic to every single developer I know - I’m actually pushing it down their throat so much that a few already started learning :smile:

Will never be able to thank you guys enough. I would add warm thanks to the Cordova team, to Firebase, to those working on NGCordova and all of those awesome developers out there making sick plugins that just works… But well, I’m becoming already to sweet and gonna have to go puke a rainbow.

Conclusion : as some said above : YOU ROCK !

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I use to be an alcoholic until I started using Ionic.

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On a serious note I was definitely way more interested in Ember but Ionic swayed me to get into Angular instead. Ionic really is a great framework.

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Hi from France,

I began to develop with Ionic alpha version, at the time I develop for android native and I find few things more universal, so I adopted Cordova for hybrid development.
But I needed a UI to design, after having hesitated between ‘Sencha Touch’, ‘JQuery mobile’, ‘ChocolateChipUI’ and ‘Kendo UI’, I discovered Ionic. It brought together everything I needed (Cordova, Angular, a beautiful UI and fast developement).
Since the framework is further improved and the community is very active. I do not regret my choice at the time.

Thanks to Ionic Team for their work and thank you to the community for its involvement.