I am writing this because I can’t code lol. Due to another unprecedented harddrive failure with my Macbook, the night before going to Jogja, I had to reinstalled everything. Some installed right but most of them is still barebone. I did get Xcode to install though :) So instead of writing codes, I’m writing this. A 1 hour flight back to Jakarta will be the deadline.
This trip to Jogja made me realize a lot of things. As always whenever in Jogja, the 2 persons you’d want to meet is Fachry Bafadal (@fachrybafadal) and Didiet Noor (@lynxluna). The duo are entrepreneurs with their own web development agency One Bit Media (@onebitmedia), one of the more “advanced” agency in Jogja. They love to code, the basic recipe of anything great.
On my first day, I met with Didiet in a cafe near his office and started our #YKode session also with @masbog. The topic was Objective-C for iOS development. It was sublime humbly speaking. Didiet is well known with his deep roots in C/C++ development and Objective-C as he told me and I quote “Coding in Objective-C is all about chatting or having a conversation with you project”. The foundation of Objective-C development are sending/receiving messages in such a way that it’s exactly what Didiet told me. A fun and refreshing way of widening my development perspective.
The night lasted until around 10 PM when we call it a quit (for that session lol). The second session at One Bit’s office was more about understanding the bigger concept of mobile development. We talked about various programming languages and platforms for mobile development. I must say this session was the most interesting session for the 3 days I’m at Jogja. What I respect the most from Didiet, he is well versed with his development efforts but he is open to new things. Usually when you’re rooted to a particular language/platform, you’d go all chauvinist against the others, that’s not the case with him.
Me as an Android developer, the paradigm change from Android’s Java to iOS’ Objective-C was tough especially syntax-wise. There were a lot to take in and I truly do hate pointers. With all the concepts being thoroughly explained by Didiet, memory management have never been easier to understand. It’s not only just alloc or dealloc, it’s about performance. No wonder C apps runs very fast, the nature of optimizations is by default. This was exactly what I needed, to gain a better grasp of Objective-C, the big picture behind it and the #YKode sessions with Didiet was quite the experience.
I stayed for 3 days and 2 nights in Jogja. The second day was looking for Batik my aunt wanted me to buy for her. This was my third time in Jogja and I wanted to know the city more so I got on a Taxi to look for motorbike rentals and guest what, met a driver Pak Mulyono and he escorted me all around Jogja to look for the Batiks my aunt is looking for. I gotta be truthful, Jogja is amazingly humble, that’s a very different experience with what Jakarta has to offer. Pak Mulyono told me that although people are making relatively lower amounts of money in Jogja, they never worried about what to eat today, the next day or any other days.
Food is very cheap in Jogja. I can see why Jogjakartans respected The Sultan very high, not only food is cheap, The Sultan is in support for SME’s in Jogja. Becak and Andong flourish in Jogja, local contents are of high regards. Culturally, Jogja is already amazingly rich with its handicraft industries, hand made everything is keeping its economies strong together with local attractions for tourists. Well everyone knows that, what we don’t already know is the potential Jogja has to offer when local contents are strong coupled with strong endorsements from The Sultan. It will be interesting in the times to come to see The Sultan lending a hand when the startup traction in Jogja is well acknowledge. The utmost regret for not attending the last Bancakan, seeing those many developers hacking their way through the night is the root of any startup. I love it :D
All and all, the last 3 days was full of Geekdom and programming philosophies, it gave me great insights into native developments from perspectives that are new, fun and full of surprises. As do with anything going on in the world wide web, every day is never the same. Didiet will call this our “Uncomfortable Zone”, a zone where we’re constantly uncomfortable dying to get ideas into executions and most importantly, doing it all with heart and passion. Thanks for the reminder guys!
It so happens that I didn’t finish this blog post while in my flight back to Jakarta, the flight time was merely an hour, well at least it was too fast to be noticed. So here I am now at MOI, Kelapa Gading waiting for Jakarta’s special to pass by. Traffic Jams never failed to surprise Jakartans because it’s just too common, I hate it, you hate it, everyone hates it and voila, hatred towards traffic jams is now the new normal so rather than be too upset about it, I’m having a Thai Ice Tea now while waiting for a friend to meet me here.
Time to wrap things up. Back in Jakarta and ready for more action, now’s the time to execute!