Meet Raymond Camden, Developer Expert for NativeScript

Raymond Camden, Developer Advocate for IBM, is a well-known developer of Cordova apps with an interesting blog and a penchant for cute cat images. Raymond gave our closing keynote at NativeScript Developer Day in Boston.

This post is the seventh in a series featuring our Telerik Developer Experts, community members who represent the best of our products. Read about other featured experts here and meet more TDEs here.

What’s your background, professionally?

I've been working on web sites in various capacities for a bit over 20 years. I've done design (badly), development, QA and more. For the past 5+ years or so my primary focus has been on client-side development, hybrid mobile development, and Node.

Where are you based and why?

I work from home in Louisiana because it is the best place on the planet. (I may be biased.) I love the food, the weather, and the cost of living is incredible (especially compared to Silicon Valley).

With whom are you working?

I work as a developer advocate for IBM. My primary focus is on LoopBack, an open source Node framework for APIs.

What project are you working on now?

Since my 'day job' isn't really a project, I'll talk about the stuff I'm doing for fun. I just finished my part of a new book I'm working on with Brian Rinaldi that covers static site generators. Now I'm looking at creating video content for Ionic 2.

What’s the most interesting project you’ve done recently?

My job is a bit different in that I don't do "client work" like most folks. I joined the team I'm on a little under a year ago, so my main "project" in that time has been to come up to speed on LoopBack, APIs and Node. It's been interesting to me in that I've never really thought about building APIs before. I've used plenty, and built some basic ones, but I never really thought about API development as a 'topic' before.

What are some challenges you are encountering now in your work?

For me, it's some of the terminology used in the API world, things like gateways for example and what they relate to your actual implementation. Since this is a new area for me, there are things I know of, but don't know the actual terms for.

Which of our products do you use and why?

NativeScript. I've been a Cordova developer for many years now and I love the idea of building cross platform apps in web technologies. I'm learning NativeScript as I find it is another great way of doing that too, and I love how it ends up with native UI instead of just a web view. Don't get me wrong—I love the web—but the XML to native UI mapping is pretty interesting!

What’s the biggest software pain point, in your opinion, in the mind of your partners or clients?

Well, I'll ignore the 'clients' aspect since I mainly work with other developers (via my writing, presenting, etc.). To me the biggest issue is "intermediate content." By that I mean there is a wealth (usually) of beginning content for a topic. There's a good deal of advanced content. But it seems like there isn't enough content for folks who are in the middle. People who want to go from beginner level to—well—just "better."