Alain Stulz

Hi! My name is Alain and I'm studying for a bachelor's degree at Uni Bern. I'm joining the Software Composition Group to write my bachelor thesis.

My Background

During my studies, I have been working part-time as a software developer at Apps with love, a digital agency based in Bern. The company was founded in 2011 and we have since created numerous bigger and smaller apps for our clients.

In the beginnings, we mostly focused on apps in the event business, such as the Gurtenfestival or Patrouille des Glaciers. Back then, we wrote a framework to help us create this kind of apps more effectively. It would be copied and reused from project to project. This included features like syncing data from a backend content management system, local caching, and showing content in premade but customizable views.

Over the years, our business has shifted — nowadays we are creating many different kinds of apps, ranging from fitness guides and AR games to travel guides. Many features have been added to our framework to try and cope with these additional challenges, but it has not been well maintained. More often than not, we find ourselves struggling against lacking test coverage and poor documentation; rather than using the framework to save time.

My Goal

For my thesis, I want to overhaul the core parts of our framework. We need to make it more flexible, easier to understand and safer to change in the future. I will start by analyzing the current state of the code and its uses throughout our project. I'll then use that analysis to define metrics by which we can track progress during my work.

In the main part of the project, we will set a strategy and prioritize the parts that need work the most. I'm planning to make changes to the way the framework is tested and integrated into our projects. Then, we will iteratively select parts of the project. I'll refactor or rewrite these parts to improve the code quality, documentation and test coverage.

To conclude the project, we will revisit the metrics and goals set at the start. I will overhaul the documentation and propose a roadmap for future development.

Contact

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the project, please get in touch: alain@appswithlove.com

You can find out more about Apps with love on our website: www.appswithlove.com or via the usual social media channels.