Here at Thinktecture, we’re focusing on cross-platform apps, and we’re optimizing our development workflow continuously to push boundaries when it comes to development performance. I found myself again falling in love with creating fast and super awesome build processes. I want to use today’s lunchtime to write this short introduction post. So in the upcoming weeks, I’ll share some cool things around cross-platform builds. If you haven’t heard of Gulp.js, it could be a bit difficult to follow the series because I will not publish an introduction for Gulp.js. Do some research on Gulp.js to understand the critical concepts of Gulp.js.

What you need

Well, you need three things in your system. First, you need a good configured terminal. If you’re still using the default OS-X terminal, go and read my article on how to setup iTerm and the incredible oh-my-zsh on your Mac. Second is, of course, a working installation of Node.js. I highly recommend you to use NVM for dealing with different Node.js versions on a single system in no-time. There is also an article that covers nvm. Check those out, they’re worth reading! Last but not least you will need a good editor to write all the build tasks. I’m using Sublime Text 3 for most of the time. So you should double-check Sublime Text 3 and make yourself comfortable with all the plugins, themes, and settings.

What you will get

Within the first post, I’ll share a sample SPA project on GitHub which I’m using through all posts as an example. The sample app (note taking app) is written using Angular.JS and Angular Material. If you haven’t done some Angular yet, it’s now time to get started. I’ll also share some of my Sublime Text 3 snippets which will make building Gulpfiles a no-brainer.

Talking points

The upcoming articles will tackle the following obstacles:

  • build Angular SPAs
  • create contextual frontend builds
  • build cross-platform desktop apps
  • build cross-platform mobile apps
  • make Gulpfiles readable and maintainable
  • create self-documenting Gulpfiles
  • treat your build as a dependency

Get started