Developer Journey is a monthly series highlighting diverse and global developers sharing relatable challenges, opportunities, and wins in their journey. Every month, we will spotlight developers around the world, the Google tools they leverage, and the kind of products they are building.
This month, we spoke with several Google Developer Experts to learn more about their path.
Giza, Egypt
Google Developer Expert, Firebase
Technical and Design Mentor at Google for Startups Accelerator Program
Google Developer Group Organizer
Senior Flutter Developer at Sarmad
I have used many tools like Firebase, Flutter, Android, Kotlin, Dart, Assistant, and Bard, of course.
My favorite tool is Firebase, because of how easy it is to set up and use. It also provides a serverless architecture, easy-to-use services, real-time synchronization, and cross-platform support, among other features. These benefits can help you build robust and scalable applications quickly and easily.
I have more than 10 apps in the store created in Android native with Kotlin, Flutter and Dart. A few examples are Rehlatech and AzkarApp.
I use Bard every day for generating, debugging, explaining, learning code, and more.
I advise everyone about to start their developer journey to:
I have used various Google tools to build projects including Angular, Dart, and Firebase.
My favorite tool has been Chrome DevTools because of its versatile suite of debugging tools and its network panel, which I often use to optimize web performance. DevTools is an essential part of my daily development process as it allows me to test, experiment, and debug code directly in the browser.
With Google Bard, I plan to develop a Figma plugin for creating dynamic design prototypes. Leveraging the natural language processing and understanding capabilities of Google Bard, the plugin will allow designers to quickly convert textual descriptions into visual design elements. This can significantly streamline the design process, bridging the gap between ideation and visual representation, while enabling non-designers to contribute effectively to the design process.
For those beginning their developer journey, my advice would be: Always stay curious and never stop learning. Technology evolves quickly, and it's important to be adaptable. Also, never undervalue the importance of good UI/UX design. It's not only about writing code, but also about creating a great user experience.
The main tools I use are the Chrome inspect tool and Lighthouse. I’m using Material UI a lot and the M3 design kit for Figma is a great time saver.
Performance is important where I work, so Lighthouse is definitely in my favorite list. The function to get a quick report, which also shows main accessibility issues, is very nice. Of course it won’t show all accessibility issues, but it’s a good place to start improving a website.
Both Lighthouse and the Chrome inspect tool are lifesavers when building websites like my blog. There’s still improvement to be made on some pages on performance, but it’s getting there.
To be honest, it only has been recently made available for my country, so I haven’t had time to really play with it. For now, I use AI chatbots as glorified assistants. English isn’t my native language, so asking such tools to help translate some things and improve grammar in some sentences is very helpful. I might use it to help me with sharing knowledge: to improve my articles, conference slides, and training material.
Start with a project you are passionate about, something that would help you, or something you wish existed. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It also doesn’t have to be something that will bring money. And remember, you also don’t have to finish it. It’s nice if you can share it with peers to get feedback but you can also share unfinished projects. It’s all about learning while working on something that you like.But remember to also step away from the computer. Developing should not be your whole life - otherwise, you will burn out really fast.
