CoronaLabs

Securing Ubuntu in the cloud

It is easy to deploy servers to the cloud within a few minutes, you can have a cloud-based server that you (or others can use). ubuntu has a great guide on setting up basic security issues but what do you need to do.

If you do not secure your server expect it to be hacked into. Below are tips on securing your cloud server.

First, read more on scanning your server with Lynis security scan.

Always use up to date software

Always use update software, malicious users can detect what software you use with sites like shodan.io (or use port scan tools) and then look for weaknesses from well-published lists (e.g WordPress, Windows, MySQL, node, LifeRay, Oracle etc). People can even use Google to search for login pages or sites with passwords in HTML (yes that simple). Once a system is identified by a malicious user they can send automated bots to break into your site (trying millions of passwords a day) or use tools to bypass existing defences (Security researcher Troy Hunt found out it’s child’s play).

Portscan sites like https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=scan are good for knowing what you have exposed.

You can also use local programs like nmap to view open ports

Instal nmap

sudo apt-get install nmap

Find open ports

nmap -v -sT localhost

Starting Nmap 7.01 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2017-08-08 23:57 AEST
Initiating Connect Scan at 23:57
Scanning localhost (127.0.0.1) [1000 ports]
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 3306/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 22/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 9101/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 9102/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 9103/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Completed Connect Scan at 23:57, 0.05s elapsed (1000 total ports)
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.00020s latency).
Not shown: 994 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
22/tcp   open  ssh
80/tcp   open  http
3306/tcp open  mysql
9101/tcp open  jetdirect
9102/tcp open  jetdirect
9103/tcp open  jetdirect

Read data files from: /usr/bin/../share/nmap
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.17 seconds
           Raw packets sent: 0 (0B) | Rcvd: 0 (0B)

Limit ssh connections

How to develop software ideas

I was recently at a public talk by Alan Jones at the UNE Smart Region Incubator where Alan talked about launching startups and developing ideas.

Alan put it quite eloquently that “With change comes opportunity” and we are all very capable of building the next best thing as technological barriers and costs are a lot lower than 5 years ago but Alan also mentioned 19 start-ups-ups fail but “if you focus on solving customer problems you have a better chance of succeeding”. Regions need to share knowledge and you can a learn from others peoples mistakes.”

I was asked after this event to share thoughts on “how do I learn to develop an app” and “how do you get the knowledge”. Here is my poor “brain dump” on how to develop software ideas (It’s hard to condense 30 years experience developing software). I will revise this post over the coming weeks so check back often.

If you have never programmed before check out this programming 101 guide here.

I have blogged on technology/knowledge things in the past at www.fearby.com and recently I blogged about how to develop cloud-based services (here, here, here, here and here) but this blog post assumes you have a validated “app idea” and you want to know how to develop yourself. If you do not want to develop an app yourself you may want to speak with Blue Chilli.

Find a good mentor.

True App Development Quotes

Finding development information is easy, following a plan is hard.
Aim for progress and not perfection.
Learn one thing at a time (Multitasking can kill your brain).
Fail fast and fail early and get feedback as early as possible from customers.
10 engaged customers are better than 10,000 disengaged users.

And a bit of humour before we start.

(click for larger image)

Here is a funny video on startup/entrepreneur life/lingo

This is a good funny, open and honest video about programming on YouTube.

Follow Seth F Samuel on twitter here.

Don’t be afraid to learn from others before you develop

My fav tips from over 200 failed startups (from https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ )

Simpler websites shouldn’t take more than 2-3 months.You can always iterate and extrapolate later. Wet your feet asap
As products became more and more complex, the performance degrades. Speed is a feature for all web apps. You can spend hundreds of hours trying to speed of the app with little success. Benchmarking tools incorporated into the development cycle from the beginning is a good idea
Outsource or buy in talent if you don’t know something (e.g marketing). Time is money.
Make an environment where you will be productive. Working from home can be convenient, but often times will be much less productive than a separate space. Also its a good idea to have separate spaces so you’ll have some work/life balance.
Not giving enough time to stress and load testing or leaving it until the last minute is something startups are known for — especially true of small teams — but it means things tend to get pretty tricky at scale, particularly if you start adding a user every four seconds.
It’s possible to make a little money from a lot of people, or a lot of money from a few people. Making a little money from a few people doesn’t add up. If you’re not selling something, you better have a LOT of eyeballs. We didn’t.
We received conflicting advice from lots of smart people about which is more important. We focused on engagement, which we improved by orders of magnitude. No one cared. Lesson learned: Growth is the only thing that matters if you are building a social network. Period. Engagement is great but you aren’t even going to get the meeting unless your top-line numbers reach a certain threshold (which is different for seed vs. series A vs. selling advertising).
We most definitely committed the all-too-common sin of premature scaling. Driven by the desire to hit significant numbers to prove the road for future fundraising and encouraged by our great initial traction in the student market, we embarked on significant work developing paid marketing channels and distribution channels that we could use to demonstrate scalable customer acquisition. This all fell flat due to our lack of product/market fit in the new markets, distracted significantly from product work to fix the fit (double fail) and cost a whole bunch of our runway.
If you’re bootstrapping, cashflow is king. If you want to possibly build a product while your revenue is coming from other sources, you have to get those sources stable before you can focus on the product.
Don’t multiply big numbers. Multiply $30 times 1.000 clients times 24 months. WOW, we will be rich! Oh, silly you, you have no idea how hard it is to get 1.000 clients paying anything monthly for 24 months. Here is my advice: get your first client. Then get your first 10. Then get more and more. Until you have your first 10 clients, you have proved nothing, only that you can multiply numbers.
Customers pay for information, not raw data. Customers are willing to pay a lot more for information and most are not interested in data. Your service should make your customers look intelligent in front of their stakeholders. Follow up with inactive users. This is especially true when your service does not give intermediate values to your users. Our system should have been smarter about checking up on our users at various stages.
Do not launch a startup if you do not have enough funding for multiple iterations. The chances of getting it right the first time are about the equivalent of winning the lotto.

Here are my tips on staying on track developing apps. What is the difference between a website, app, API, web app, hybrid app and software (my blog post here)?

I have seen quite a few projects fail because:

The wrong technology was mandated.
The software was not documented (by the developers).
The software was shelved because new developers hated it or did not want to support it.

Project Roles (hats)

It is important to understand the roles in a project (project management methodology aside) and know when you are being a “decision maker” or a “technical developer”. A project usually has these roles.

Sponsor/owner (usually fund the project and have the final say).
Executive/Team leader/scrum master (manage day to day operations, people, tasks and resources).
Team members (UI, UX, Marketers, Developers (DevOps, Web, Design etc) are usually the doers.
Stakeholders (people who are impacted (operations, owners, Helpdesk)).
Subject Matter Experts (people who should guide the work and not be ignored).
Testers (people who test the product and give feedback).

It can be hard as a developer to switch hats in a one person team.

How do you develop and gain knowledge

First, document what you need to develop (what problem are you solving and what value will your idea bring). Does this solution exist already? Don’t solve a problem that already exists.

Developing software is not hard, you just need to be logical, research, be patient and follow a plan. The hardest part can be gluing components together.

I like to think of developing software like making a car if you need 4 wheels do you have 4 wheels? If you want to build it yourself and save some money can you make wheels (make rubber strips with steel reinforced/vulcanized rubber, make alloys and add bearings and have them pass regulations) or should you buy wheels (some things are cheaper to make than other things)? Developing software can be easy if you know what your are doing and have the experience and are aware of the costs and risks. Developing software can lead you down a rabbit hole of endless research, development, and testing if you don’t know what you are doing.

Examples 1:

I “need a webpage”:

Research: Will Wix, Shopify or a hosted WordPress website do (is it flexible or cheap enough) or do I install WordPress (guide here) or do I learn and build an HTML website and buy a theme and modify it (and have a custom/flexible solution)?

Example 2:

I “need an iPhone and Android app”:

Research: You will need to learn iOS and Android programming and you may need a server or two to hold the apps data, webpage and API. You will also need to setup and secure the servers or choose to install a database or go with a “database as a service” like cloud.mongodb.com or google firebase.

Money can buy anything (but will it be flexible/cheap enough), time can build anything (but will it be secure enough).

Developing software can be easy if you know what your are doing and have the experience and are aware of the costs and risks but developing software can lead you down a rabbit hole of endless research, development and testing if you don’t know what you are doing.

Almost all systems will need a central database to store all data, you can choose a traditional relational SQL database or a newer NoSQL database. MySQL is a good/cheap relational SQL database and MongoDB is a good NoSQL database. You will need to decide on how your app talks to the database (directly or via an API (protected by OAuth or limited access tokens)). It is a bad idea to open a database directly to the world with no security. Sites like www.shodan.io will automatically scan the Internet looking for open databases or systems and report this as an insecure site to anyone. It is in your interest to develop secure systems in all stages of development.

CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) is a common group of database tasks that you can do to prove you can read, write, update and delete from a database. While performing CRUD operations is a good to benchmark to also see how fast the database it. if a database is the slowest link then you can use memory to cache database values (read my guide here). Caching can turn a cheap server into a faster server. Learning by doing can quickly build skills so “research”, “do” and “learn”.

Most solutions will need a website (and a web server). Here is a good article comparing Apache and Nginx (the leading open source web servers).

Stacks and Technology – There are loads of development environments (stacks), frameworks and technologies that you can choose. Frameworks supposedly make things easier and faster but frameworks and technologies change (See 2016 frameworks to learn guide and 2017 frameworks to learn guide) frequently (and can be abandoned). Frameworks supposedly make things easier and faster but be careful most frameworks run 30% slower than raw server side and client code. I’d recommend you learn a few technologies like NGINX, NodeJS, PHP and MySQL and move up from there.

The Mean Stack is a popular web development platform (MEAN = MongoDB, ExpressJS, Angular and NodeJS.).

Apps can be developed for Apple platforms by signing up here (about $150 AUD a year) and using the XCode IDE. Apps can be developed for the Android Platform by using Android Studio (for about $20 (one off fee)). Microsoft has a developer portal for the Windows Platform. Google also has an online scalable database as a service called Firebase. If you look hard enough you will find a service for everything but connecting those services can be timely, costly or make security and a scalable solution impossible so beware of using as-a-service platforms. I used the Corona SDK to develop an app but abandoned the platform due to changes in the vendor’s communication and enforced policies.

If you are not sure don’t be afraid of ask for help on Twitter.

Twitter is awesome for finding experts

Recent twitter replies to a problem I had.

Learning about new Technology and Stacks

To build knowledge you need to learn stuff, build stuff, test (benchmark), get feedback and build more stuff. I like to learn about new technology and stacks by watching Udemy courses and they have a huge list of development courses (Web Development, Mobile Apps, Programming Languages, Game Development, Databases, Software Testing, Software Engineering etc).

I am currently watching a Practical iOS 11 course by Stephen DeStefano on Udemy to learn about unreleased/upcoming features on the Apple iPhone (learning about XCode 9, Swift 4, Whats new in iOS 11, Drag and drop, PDF and ARKit etc).

Udemy is awesome (Udemy often have courses for $15).

If you want to learn HTML go to https://www.w3schools.com/.

https://devslopes.com/have a number or development related courses and an active community of developers in a chat system.

You can also do formal study via an education provider (e.g. Bachelor of computer sciences at UNE or Certificate IV in programming or Diploma in Software Development at TAFE).

I would recommend you use Twitter and follow keywords (hashtags) around key topics (e.g #www, #css, #sql, #nosql, #nginx, #mongodb, #ios, #apple, #android, #swift, #objectivec, #java, #kotlin) and identify users to follow. Twitter is great for picking up new information.

I follow the following developers on YouTube (TheSwiftGuy, AppleProgrammer, AwesomeTuts, LetsBuildThatApp, CodingTech etc)

Companies like https://www.civo.com/ offer developer friendly features with hosting, https://www.pebbled.io/ offer to develop for you and https://serverpilot.io/ help you spin up software on hosting providers.

What To Develop

First, you need to break down what you need. (e.g ” I want an app for iOS and Android in 5 months that does XYZ. The app must be secure and be fast. Users must be able to register an account and update their profile”).

Choosing how high to ensure you development project scales depends on your peak expected/active concurrent users (ratio of paying and free users). You can develop your app to scale very high but this may cost more money initially, it can be bad to pay to ensure scalability early. As long as you have a good product and robust networking/retry routines and UI you don’t need to scale high early.

Once you know what you need you can search the open source community for code that you can use. I use Alamofire for iOS network requests, SwiftyJSON for processing JSON data and other open source software. The only downside of using open source software is it may be abandoned by the creators and break in the future. Saving you time early may cost you time later.

Then you can break down what you don’t want. (e.g “I don’t want a web app or a windows phone or windows desktop app”). From here you will have a list of what you need and what you can avoid.

You will also need to choose a project management methodology (I have blogged about this here). Having a list of action item’s and a plan and you can work through developing your app.

While you are researching it is a good idea to develop smaller fun projects to refine your skills. There are a number of System Development Life Cycles (SDLC’s) but don’t worry if you get stuck, seek advice or move on. It is a good idea to get users beta testing your app early and seek feedback. Apple has the TestFlight app where you can send beta versions of apps to best testers. Here is a good guide on Android beta testing.

If you are unsure about certain user interface options or features divide your beta testers and perform A/B or split testing to determine the most popular user interfaces. Capturing user data and logs can also help with debugging and user usage actions.

Practice

Develop smaller proof of concept apps in new technologies or frameworks and you will build your knowledge and uncover limitations in certain frameworks and how to move forward with confidence. It is advisable to save your source code for later use and to share with others.

I have shared quite a bit of code at https://simon.fearby.com/blog/ that I refer to from time to time. I should have shared this on GitHub but I know Google will find this if people want it.

Get as much feedback as you can on what you do and choose (don’t trust the first blog post you read (me included)).

Most companies offer Webinars on their products. I like the NGINX webinars. Tutorialspoint have courses on development topics. Sitepoint is a good development site that offers free books, courses, and articles. What are API’s information by Programmable web.

You may want to document your application flow to better understand how the user interface works.

Useful Tools

Balsamic Mockups and Blueprint are handy for mocking up applications.

C9.io is a great web-based IDE that can connect to a VM on AWS or Digital Ocean. I have a guide here on connecting Cloud 9 to an AWS VM here.

I use the Sublime Text 3 text editor when editing websites locally.

(image courtesy of https://www.sublimetext.com/ )

I use the Mac Paw app to help test API’s I develop locally.

(image courtesy of https://paw.cloud )

Snippets is a great application for the Mac for storing code snippets.

I use the Cornerstone Subversion app for backing up my code on my Mac.

Webservers: https://www.iis.net/IIS Webserver, NGINX Webserver, Apache Webserver.

NodeJS programming manual and tutorials.

I use Little Snitch (guide here) for simulating network down in app development.

I use the Forklift file manager on OSX.

Databases: SQL tutorials, NoSQL Tutorials, MySQL documentation.

Siege is a command line HTTP load testing tool.

http://loader.io/ is a nice web-based benchmarking tool.

Bootstrap is an essential mobile responsive framework.

Atlassian Jira is an essential project tracking tool. More on Agile Epics v Stories v Tasks on the Atlassian community website here. I have a post on developing software and staying on track here using Jira.

Jsfiddle is a good site that allows you to share code you are working on or having trouble with.

Dribbble is a “show and tell” site for designers and creatives.

Stackoverflow is the go-to place to ask for help.

Things I care about during development phases.

Scalability
Flexibility
Risk
Cost
Speed

Concentrating too much on one facet can risk exposing other facets. Good programmers can recommend a deliver a solution that can be strong in all areas ( I hate developing apps that are slow but secure or scalable and complex).

Platforms

You can signup for online servers like Azure, AWS (my guide here) or you can use a cheaper CPanel based hosting. Read my guide on the costs of running a cloud-based service.

Use my link to get a free Digital Ocean server for two months by using this link. Read my blog post here to help setup you VM. You can always use Ubuntu on your local machine to use Ubuntu (read my guide here). Don’t forget to use a GIT code repository like GitHub or Bitbucket.

Locally you can install Ubuntu (developers edition) and have a similar environment as cloud platforms.

Lessons Learned

Deploy servers close to the customers (Digital Ocean is too far away to scale in Australia).
Accessibility and testing (make things accessible from the start).
Backup regularly (Use GIT, backup your server and use Rsync to copy files to remote servers and use services like backblaze.com to backup your machine).
Transportability of technology (Use open technology and don’t lock yours into to one platform or service).
Cost (expensive and convenient solutions may be costly).
Buy in themes and solutions (wrapbootstrap.com).
Do improve what you have done (make things better over time). Thing progress and not perfection.

There is no shortage of online comments bagging certain frameworks or platforms so look for trends and success stories and don’t go with the first framework you find. Try candidate frameworks and services and make up your own mind.

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. – General George S. Patton

Costs

Sometimes cost is not the deciding factor (read my blog post on Alibaba cloud). You should estimate your apps costs per 1000 users. What do light v heavy users cost you? I have a blog post on the approx cost of cloud services. I started researching a scalable NoSQL platform on IBM Cloudant and it was going to cost $4,000 USD a month and integrating my own App logic and security was hard. I ended up testing MongoDB Cloud where I can scale to three servers for $80 a month but for now, I am developing my current project on my own AWS server with MongoDB instance. Read my blog post here on setting up MongoDB and read my blog post on the best MongoDB GUI.

Here is a great infographic for viewing what’s involved in mobile app development.

You can choose a number of tools or technologies to achieve your goals, for me it is doing it economically, securely and in a scalable way that has predictable costs. It is quite easy to develop something that is costly, won’t scale or not secure or flexible. Don’t get locked into expensive technologies. For example, AWS has a user pays Node JS service called Lambada where you get Million of free hits a month and then you get charged $0.0000002 per request thereafter. This sounds good but I prefer fixed pricing/DIY servers better as it allows me to build my own logic into apps (this is more important than scalability).

Using open source software of off the shelf solutions may speed things up initially? Will It slow you down later though? Ensure free solutions are complete and supported and Ensure frameworks are helping. Do you need one server or multiple servers (guide on setting up a distributed MySQL environment )? You can read about my scalability on a budget journey here. You can speed up a server in two ways Scale Up (Add more Mhz or CPU cores) or scale out (add more servers).

Start small and use free frameworks and platforms but have a tested scale up plan, I researched cheap Digital Ocean servers and moved to AWS to improve latency and tested MongoDB on Digital Ocean and AWS but have a plan to scale up to cloud.mongodb.com if need be.

Outsource (contractors)

Remember outsourcing work tasks (or complete outsourcing of development) can buy you time and or deliver software faster. Outsourcing can also introduce risks and be expensive. Ask for examples of previous work and get raw numbers on costs (now and in the future) and concurrent users that a particular bit of outsourcing work will achieve.

If you are looking to outsource work do look at work that the person or company has done before (if is fast, compliant, mobile scalable, secure, robust, backup up, do you have rights to edit/own and own the IP etc). I’d be cautious of companies who say they can do everything and don’t show live demos.

Also, beware of restrictions on your code set by the contractors. Can they do everything you need (compare with your list of Moscow must haves)? Sometimes contractors only code or do what they are comfortable with that can impact your deliverables.

Do use a private Git repository (that you own) like GitHub or BitBucket to secure your code and use software like Trello or Atlassian JIRA to track your project. Insist the contractors use your repository to retain control.

You can always sell equity in your idea to an investor and get feedback/development from companies like Bluechilli.

Monetization and data

Do have multiple monetization streams (initial app purchase cost, in-app purchase, subscriptions, in-app credit, advertising, selling code/components etc). Monthly revenue over yearly subscription works best to ensure cash flow.

Capture usage data and determine trends around successful engagement, Improve what works. Use A/B testing to roll our new features.

I like Backblaze post on getting your first 1,000 customers.

Maintenance, support risk and benefits

Building your own service can be cheaper but also riskier, if you fail to secure an app you are in trouble if you cannot scale you are in trouble. If you don’t update your server when vulnerabilities come out you are in trouble. Also, Google on monetization strategies. Apple apps do appear to deliver more profits over Android. Developers often joke “Apple devices offer 90% of the profits and 10% of the problems and Android apps offer 90% of the problems and 10% of the profits”.

Also, Apple users tend to update to the latest operating system sooner where Android devices are rather fragmented.

Do inform you users with self-service status pages and informative error messages and don’t annoy users.

Use Free Trials and Credit

Most vendors have free trials so use them

https://aws.amazon.com/free/AWS have 12 month free tiers.

Use this link to get two months free with Digital Ocean.

Microsoft Azure also give away free credit.

Google cloud also have free credit.

Don’t be afraid to ask.

MongoDB Cloud also gives away free credit if you ask.

Security

Sites like Shodan.io will quickly reveal weaknesses in your server (and services), this will help you build robust solutions from the start before hackers find them. Read https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page to know h0w to develop secure websites. Listen to the SecurityNow podcast to learn how the technology works and is broken. Following TroyHunt is recommended to keep up to date with security in general. @0xDUDE is a good ethical hacker to follow to stay up-to date on security exploits also @GDI_FDN is a good non-profit organization that helps defend sites that use open source software.

White hack hackers exist but so do black hat ones.

Read the Open Web Application Security site here. Read my guide on setting up public key pinning in security certificates here.

I use the ASafaWeb site to test your sites from common ASP security flaws. If you have a secure certificate on your site you will need to ensure the certificate is secure and up to date with the SSL Labs SSL Test site.

Once your websites IP address is known (get it from SSL Labs) run a scan over your site with https://www.shodan.io/ to find open ports or security weaknesses.

Shodan.io allows you and others to see public information about your server and services. You can read about well-known internet ports here.

Anyone can find your server if you are running older (or current) web servers and or services.

It is a good idea to follow security researchers like Steve Gibson and Troy Hunt and stay up to date with live exploits. http://blog.talosintelligence.com is also a good site for reading technical breakdowns of exploits.

Networking

Do share and talk about what you do with other developers. You can learn a lot from other developers and this can save you loads of time and mistakes. True developers love talking about their code and solutions.

Decision Making

Quite a lot of time can be spent on deciding on what technology or platform to use, I decide by factoring in cost, risk and security over flexibility, support and scalability. If I need flexibility, lower support or scalability then I’ll choose a different technology/platform. Generally, technology can help with support. Scalable solutions need effort from start to finish (it is quite easy to slow down any technology or service).

Don’t be afraid to admit you have chosen the wrong technology or platform. It is far easier to research and move on than live with poor technology.

If you have chosen the wrong technology and stick with it, you (and others) will loath working with it (impacting productivity/velocity). Do you spend time swapping technology or platforms now or be less productive later?

Intellectual property and Trademarks

Ensure you search international trademarks for your app terms before you start using them. The Australian ATO has a good Australian business name checker here.

https://namechk.com/ is also a good place to search for your app ideas name before you buy or register any social media accounts.

Using https://namechk.com/ you can see “mystartupidea” name is mostly free.

And the name “microsoft’ is mostly taken.

Seek advice from a start-up experts from https://www.bluechilli.com/ like Alan Jones.

See my guide on how to get useful feedback for your ideas here.

Tips

Use Git Source Control systems like GitHub or Bitbucket from the start and offsite backup your server and environments frequently. Digital Ocean charges 20% of your servers costs to back it up. AWS has multiple backup offerings.
Start small and scale up when needed.
Do lots of research and test different platforms, frameworks, and technologies and you will know what you should choose to develop with.

(Image above found at http://startupquotes.startupvitamins.com/ Follow Startup Vitamins on Twitter here.).

You will know when you are a developer when you have gained knowledge and experience and can automatically avoid technologies that will not fit a solution.

Share

Don’t be afraid to share what you know (read my blog post on this here). Sharing allows you to solidify your knowledge and get new information. Shane Bishop from EWWW Image Optimizer WordPress plugin wrote Setting up a fast distributed MySQL environment with SSL for us. If you have something to share on here please let me know here on twitter.

It’s never too late to do

One final tip is knowledge is not everything, planning and research is key, a mind that can’t develop may be better than a mind that can because they have no experience (or baggage) and may find faster ways to do things. Thanks to http://zachvo.com/ for teaching me this during a recent WordPress re-deployment. Sometimes the simplest solution is.

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DRAFT: 1.86 added short link

Short: https://fearby.com/go2/develop/

How to get started in programming

Today I was asked: Should I learn to code in Swift and what can I build? Swift 1.0 (http://www.swift.org) was launched in 2014 by Apple and it is a multi-platform programming language for iOS, macOS and Linux (but not Windows). Swift has gone through rapid changes recently and Swift 4.0 is the latest stable version. Swift updates can break a number of previous swift coding standards set in Swift 1.x, 2.x and 3.x so don’t get comfortable.

Should a beginner learn Swift? Yes if you only want to develop apps for iOS and macOS and ignore Windows and Android platforms. Apple has released a learn to code in Swift app that will make learning swift much easier http://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/

Previously apple recommended developers use the Objective C language to code and compile apps for iOS and macOS. Objective C has been in production since 1983 and is very complex (loads of squiggles, square brackets and legacy classes).

Most smartphones and tablets run Android, not because they are better but because they are cheaper (that’s my opinion). A top of the line iPhone 6S+ costs $1500 where a reasonable Android phone will set you back about $130 to $400. I personally think Apple devices are faster, better and more secure but if you are developing you need to publish apps on android also. Apple devices are supported for a lot longer than Android devices ( Android support lifetime v Apple iOS ). Even the 5-year-old iPad 2 is getting the iOS 10 software update in September 2016. In 2017 iOS 11 does not run on an iPad 2.

If you wanted to native develop android apps you would need to learn Java in the https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html IDE. Be prepared to be confused as the Android Studio has a steep learning curve.

Ok so where do beginners start.

What Companies look for when hiring programmers

https://youtu.be/QbSD4EtpVdY

Jumping right into Swift, Java, Objective C or Lua may not be a good idea if a plain old website will do. It depends on what you want to develop before you start coding. All developers should be able to knock up a website and database before jumping into making mobile apps. PHP ( http://www.php.net ) and MySQL ( http://www.mysql.com ) are good options for beginners making websites.

http://www.udemy.com and http://www.w3schools.com/ is a great place to go to learn more about coding. If you want to see what the Pro’s are doing check out http://www.sitepoint.com are great places for learning WHAT you need to know fast.

But I really want to develop a mobile app.

Development platforms like the Corona SDK http://www.coronalabs.com are a great option for beginners as it is easy to pick up and is super fast and supports eye-popping OpenGL animations and apps along with business apps. Corona allows you to code in a programming language called Lua ( https://www.coronalabs.com/learn-lua ) and compiles your app to the iOS/Android/macOS or Windows desktops. How cool is that.

Another possible solution is using the Electron technology

Corona wraps a common interface (API https://docs.coronalabs.com/API/index.html) over each platforms API so your code calls the corona API and when you compile your app the platforms native API methods are called.

Corona has great guides and support pages:

https://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/programming/index.html – Getting Started

https://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/index.html –

https://coronalabs.com/blog – Keep up to date with Corona and read guides on many topics.

https://coronalabs.com/resources – Corona Resources.

https://www.youtube.com/user/CoronaGeek – Weekly Corona video podcast.

https://forum.coronalabs.com – Talk to hundreds of Corona developers and ask questions.

https://docs.coronalabs.com/api/index.html – Corona API

What tools do you need

A Mac Computer with a retina display.
Sublime text Editor https://www.sublimetext.com/3 (and Sublime to Corona Plugin https://coronalabs.com/products/editor/ )
Source Version Software http://www.zenaware.com/cornerstone
A good code snippet saving app is http://snippets.me/
Patience and drive.

Knowing what you want to develop will narrow down the technologies you need to learn.

Summary:

If you want to make websites learn HTML and PHP.
If you want to build business apps inside corporations learn Visual Studio.NET
If you want to make mobile apps fast learn Corona.
If you want to make advanced iOS apps learn Swift
If you want to make advanced Android apps learn Android Studio
If you want to make online database learn MySQL

Check out my guides here on:

How to build your first cross-platform mobile app with corona

Creating a development server for $5 a month

What is the difference between a website, app, web app, hybrid app and software?

..and many more free guides here.

Happy coding.

Still reading? Check out the beginner guides on Sitepoint.

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Ask a question or recommend an article

V1.2. Added short link

Sort: https:/fearby.com/go2/learn/

How to build your first cross platform mobile app with corona

Ok, you have an Apple or Android device and want to develop mobile/tablet apps. The first thing you will need is an Apple computer, Apple Developer Subscriptions to develop Apple apps and a Google developer subscription for Android along with some software. You can develop on Windows but it requires emulating the Mac OSX and it is not recommended. I started developing on a $699 Mac Mini computer running the Apple OSX Operating system.

This guide covers Apple app development steps now, I will be adding Android and Windows Phone building steps soon..

Before you begin I will assume..

you have an Apple computer (running the latest system version of Apple’s operating system).
you have a paid Apple Developer subscription ($150 AUD a year).
you have installed XCode, Sublime Text 3 (free trial is ok) and Corona Labs SDK.
you have installed the Corona Editor Sublime package (info).

1. Apple Developer Setup

1.01 Login to the Apple Developer Portal.

1.02 Use your paid apple developer subscription to login.

1.03 Developer Subscription Options

The Apple developer portal is quite busy at first sight.

SDK’s will list all the downloads you have available as a developer.
Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles is where you prepare certificates that are required to make apps.
iTunes Connect is where you track your app sales and submit apps to the app store.
other options hold no surprises.

1.04 Clicking the Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles above will load this screen.

1.05 App submission workflow

Apple have detailed guides on how you develop apps and submit them to the stores. If in doubt ask on the Apple developer forums.

1.06 Creating certificates for your development environment.

Apple have very robust security around apps and distribution. On Windows desktops you can make a program, upload it and have very little restrictions on putting malicious code in your app. Apple on the other hand do not allow you to put an app on your iPhone that you develop yourself unless you go through many hoops to first link your machine to a development account, application and development account/team. Follow the steps below to setup a brand new development machine to develop and distribute apps to a number of test devices locally.

1.07 Open XCode and go to XCode menu, Preferences and Accounts and click the + and Add Apple ID.

1.08 Sign in with your Apple developer account.

1.09 You will notice one or more Team names (depending on your account), Select the first team account in the bottom right list and click View Details.

1.10 Clicking Create on each of the Signing Identities will run a series of scripts to setup encryption keys and sync them with Apple.

1.11 Click Create next to all of the items except Developer ID Application and Developer ID Installer is what we need to make mobile and mac desktop apps. Developer ID signing identities are required for apps that are to be published outside of the Apple Desktop Gatekeeper protections.

1.12 OK, what happened above? Xcode created a bunch of certificates that are linked to your machine, apple servers and your development account. The certificates will last for 1 year only; you will need to refresh them in 11 months time. You can view these certificates by opening the Apple Keychain Access program.

Certificates found under the My Certificates group.

1.13 There are more certificates found under the Certificates group.

1.14 Although not mandatory I would highlight the new certificates and back them up. Select the certificates (shift click) and go to the Keychain Access File menu then click Export Items.

1.15 Click Save and enter a strong password (write the password down).

1.16 Also backup the newly created My Certificates too.

1.17 Now put these files somewhere safe away from your main development machine just incase you need to reactivate the certificates on a different machine

1.18 Now we can log back into https://developer.apple.com and open Certificates, Identifiers and Profiles and click on All under Certificates. You will see the certificates that XCode created for you.

1.19 But first we need to add some real test devices (iPhone’s and iPad’s) to the list of approved devices). Open the Devices area of your developer portal.

1.20 Every Apple device has a unique UDID inside it and we need to find it and add it to the list of known/approved devices we want to test apps on. We can only add 100 devices a year so don’t go nuts adding devices of mates.

http://whatsmyudid.com/ is a great site that explains how you can find the UDID using iTunes or via the web.

To add your first test device plug it into iTunes and open the devices page and mouse click on the serial number.

1.21 When you see the UDID appear press CMD+C to copy the UDID to the clipboard.

1.22 Now go back to the Apple Developer Portal, open Certificates, Identifiers and Profiles, open Devices select iPhone (or your device type) and click the + and enter your device description and UDID. Be descriptive “Simon’s iPhone 6 Plus” and not just “iPhone”.

1.23 Click Continue above then Register.

Add more test devices now (this will save regenerating certificates later).

1.24 Now we can create an Application ID. Open Identifiers then click App IDs.

1.25 Your first App certificate should be a Wildcard App certificate. A wildcard certificate allows you to build many different test apps using the one certificate (the downside is a wildcard app cannot receive push notifications and some other functions). A wildcard allows you to quickly mock up a new app and build it in seconds.

Enter “App Wildcard” in the name, select Wildcard App ID radio button, and “com.yourcompany.*” (change your company name to your company name) in the Wildcard App ID.

1.26 No need to select any of the extra options provided.

1.27 Submit the App ID.

1.28 You can read more on the extra services here and here.

1.29 Now you can create dedicated App IDs for known apps that you want to build with additional services. Choose a good name and use the “com.yourcomany.yourapp” App ID.

1.30 You can choose more app services for dedicated App IDs. Below are the ones I prefer as standard.

1.31 Confirm your App ID and submit it.

1.32 Now the final step of creating development certificates to allow us to put the apps on devices.

Open the Development node under Provisioning Profiles.

1.33 Click iOS App Development (note we are selecting development and not distribution, we will return here to create a distribution certificate when we are ready to publish to the app store)

1.34 Choose your desired App ID to build a provisioning profile for (wildcard or dedicated)

1.35 Select the Certificate (or teams) to use.

1.36 Select the devices you wish to be able to run the app.

1.37 Review and click generate.

1.38 There is no need to download these as Xcode can do this.

Create as many App IDs as you like now.

1.39 Open XCode and return the file XCode then Preferences menu then Accounts tab. Xcode should auto refresh and sync down your App IDs.

fyi: There are errors in my graphic below (all names appear the same but the list will be the same as you created them.

1.40 Now the fun part, go to http://coronalabs.com and signup and download the editor.

Corona comes with loads of demo projects and you can open a project and view it in the simulator and or build it straight away,

1.41 I opened the Button Events demo and instantly went to Corona’s File, Build then iOS menu. Select a certificate that you want to use to build the app. A device can have hundreds of apps on it that were built with the Wildcard certificate or one app per dedicated app certificate.

1.42 Corona saves an app file on the desktop (if that is where you saved to). Open Xcode and click Window then Devices menu

1.43 Plug in your device and it should appear in Xcode’s list of devices. Simply drag the app to your device to upload it to your device.

1.44 You can see the compiled app on the desktop and the uploaded app on the device.

1.55 You can see the simulated app on the desktop and the real app on the device. Congratulations.

2. Android device setup.

2.01 You will need to install the Apple Java Runtime to be able to build Android apps on Corona.

2.02 Optional: Install the Android Developer Studio ( also requires JDK7 ). The full blown Android Developer Studio allows you to run older versions of Android in simulators.

2.02.01 Open the Android Developer Studio app.

2.02.02 Click Next.

2.02.03 If you do not have JSK installed goto the next step to download it.

2.02.04 Goto Oracle and download the latest JDK7 and install it (or skip to 2.02.05)

2.02.05 If you just installed JDK click Previous then Next to detect the JDK location.

2.02.06 Select Custom and click Next

2.02.07 Choose your Theme and click Next

2.02.08 Tick the optional “Android Virtual Device – (1 GB)” and click next.

2.02.09 Select the recommended ram settings for the virtual device.

2.02.10 Wait for the components to download.

2.02.11 take note of the virtual device name and click Finish.

2.02.12 Android Studio software options.

2.02.13 I searched in the Android Developer Guides and Using the Android Emulator guide to see where the Simulator was (no luck). I had to create a blank project to see where the virtual Android simulator was installed.

2.02.14 Manually starting the Android Emulator.

Open the Terminal
Type “cd /Users/USERNAME/Library/Android/sdk/tools/”
Type “./emulator -avd Nexus_5_API_23_x86 -netspeed full -netdelay none”

2.02.15 Listing Connected Development Devices.

You may have troubles actually getting files onto your Android 4.x or 5.x devices as some distributions of Android block USB mode. You may need to enable running of apps from unknown sources (Settings -> Security).

Open the Terminal
Type “cd /Users/USERNAME/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools”
Type “./adb devices”

2.02.16 How to copy new apps to the device via Command Line (if you do not want to use vendor software to transfer files)

To be continued (Android guide is under construction).

3. Windows phone setup

Guide not available yet.

4. Where to now?

Review the Corona API documentation, hang about the forums, follow Corona on social media, watch the Corona Geeks video cast..

Install the Corona Editor into the Sublime Text Editor (guide here)

Now Code 🙂

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Type	Protocol	Port Range	Source	Comment
HTTP	TCP	80	0.0.0.0/0	Opens a web server port for later
All ICMP	ALL	N/A	0.0.0.0/0	Allows you to ping
All traffic	ALL	All	0.0.0.0/0	Not advisable long term but OK for testing today.
SSH	TCP	22	0.0.0.0/0	Not advisable, try and limit this to known IP’s only.
HTTPS	TCP	443	0.0.0.0/0	Opens a secure web server port for later

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