Revamping our Developer Program for 2017! You in?

[mrgameoz]

Hey der, thanks for taking this initiative , it will help developer in many ways, mostly boost their morale, to be frank making games for windows phones , we don't even get much help microsoft themselves, it will be great if you make weekly 5-6 featured apps, it will be great boost and help for developers, ofcourse app getting featured should also meet the quality.

 

[James Falconer]

@mrgameoz - thanks for replying! Yes, I agree a feature seems to be a common request, and something we can do. But like you say, we'd only want to put the features on really great stuff! Hopefully we can encourage and help devs produce really amazing software!!

 

[London Jr]

I would love to see the developer community revamped as a new developer to allow some great feedback from all angles. I love seeing what people are capable of and my main goal is to learn more and find ways to reach people. I understand that our community is smaller than most and I would love to see what would happen if we were able to showcase more and get a ton of feedback from users on this site. No bog site has a bigger windows phone community that this one, so this would be the best avenue for developers to be involved with these specific user.

 

[ErazerHead]

I'd like to see the program live up to its original promise of giving developers exposure and putting apps in the front page: the only indie apps I've seen on the front page so far have been because of the AdDuplex scheme.

The Windows App store is broken when it comes to discoverability (even more so than Android and iOS's ones), which makes having alternative ways of getting exposure even more necessary.

I personally have gotten more engagement by posting about my apps on Reddit than here.

 

[James Falconer]

@London Jr @ErazerHead - totally agree. Front page exposure is one of the big things I want to draw into that. I also want to make folks realize that hey - things have changed. No need to go to Reddit anymore (well, still go there I don't discriminate!), but I want the WC program to be worth joining and participating in for any dev. Period.

 

[erotavlas]

Some people have suggested this to also include support for developers building apps, but honestly as a developer if I need help with something or support, this site wouldn't be the first place I turn to. I would go somewhere like stack overflow first or Microsoft forums. Maybe more so if it is a technical question.

However where this site might shine is allow for discussion in a forum style setting which stack overflow does not support. Chat rooms on stackoverflow are also seldom visited by developers writing UWP or .NET applications, so if it was possible to get live feedback and discussion going in a chat setting that would be really helpful.

I think the primary goal of this site though should be to help developers showcase what they built and get feedback and user to use their apps they spent hard work making. Especially if they are good apps.

 

[James Falconer]

@erotavlas - think we're on the same page. Discussion in the forum setting, and highlight of great stuff on the front end of the site is definitely something we can provide!!

 

[mbrdev]

I'm interested in this, I attempted some collaboration here with the UWP Dev Club but unfortunately it died quite quickly because I didn't have enough time to run it let alone take part enough to get it off the ground.

I'm still extremely busy with my day job at the moment but waiting to hear back from MS about a developer role which should give me a better work - life balance and enable me to take part more.

I believe if Windows Central could facilitate a collaborative project it could spawn a "Microsoft Garage" type of group and may lead to some very interesting apps, though it would be very nice to see that focused on Windows 10 UWP with an actual Mobile First push!

I'm by no means an expert in mobile app development but I have a lot of dot net experience especially in backend services so I would love to collaborate on a project by handling the Azure side of things and learning from others on the team about XAML UI.

What the developers corner is sorely missing for me is participation, the majority of threads end up being "I've never programmed before but I want to make an app" or "I'm not a developer but I've got a great idea for an app that I want someone to make for me", those threads are not a problem and it's great to see people take an interest but when the forum is flooded with those posts it does make it harder for experienced developers to actually find like minded and like skilled people to discuss and collaborate with.

I'd also like to see app development and mobile game development separated, I know both are apps and both are development but game development is a whole other barrel of fish so I think it would be good to see some distinction between the two.

Very much looking forward to see what happens here and hopefully join a team to make some cool apps!

 

[TehKeran]

Hi,

From my point of view, what I would look for in the developer program is:

• Support for initial "jump-start" promotion of the app
• As stated in previous posts - weekly featured apps somewhere in the middle of the page
• Publisher guides - there are tons of tutorials on how to write UWP/WP apps (for that we have StackOverflow anyway), but what I'm missing completely is a comprehensive set of tutorials on how to properly:
  -- publish an app - handling all the certification problems, differences between debug and release builds for UWP/WP
  -- configure ad networks and best practices - I still don't know how to do it properly
  -- promote your app - either through some ad networks or through some forums/pages like this one

Best regards,
Keran

 

[x-2]

So, revamping canceled?