Developer Spotlight: Greg Stoll

Join us as we talk to developers large and small in the webOS community. This week: Greg Stoll. Are you a developer interested in getting spotlighted? Hit us up!

Name: Greg Stoll

Company: gregstoll.com

Location: Austin, Texas

webOS Apps: FlightPredictor, LJ for WebOS, We the People, Private Browser, GAuth, PasswordHash, and BoardGameGeek.

Current device: Sprint Palm Pre, although I did just get a developer Pre 2 that’s very slick!

Tell us about yourself. Really, we want to know.

I was a big Palm fan through the PDA years, and was pretty excited to hear about the Palm Pre...excited enough to “lose” my existing phone while hiking so I’d have to get a Sprint Palm Pre in August 2009.

I live in Austin, and my day job is at National Instruments working on LabVIEW. (anyone in the Austin area looking for a hardware/software job? We’re hiring - drop me a line!) It’s totally unrelated to webOS, so getting to work on that in my spare time is a nice change of pace.

What in your background led you to develop for webOS?

I’ve done a bunch of little web projects in my spare time (check out gregstoll.com) and so the idea of webOS was a natural fit. Once I got started and learned my way around Mojo, it was very easy to make changes and add new features.

Why do you continue to develop for webOS?

I still love my Pre, and although Android is tempting, I really like Palm/HP’s vision of the future. I’m itching to get my hands on a Pre3 and TouchPad! The core OS experience is just so appealing I’m willing to put up with the much smaller App Catalog.

And honestly, the smaller App Catalog makes it easier to have apps that get noticed. My two biggest apps (FlightPredictor and LJ for WebOS) are about operating with existing services. (FlightCaster and LiveJournal, respectively) There are already apps for these provided by the existing service on iOS, and so this is my way of trying to get some parity for webOS.

I realize this sounds a little selfish, but believe me, I’d be happy as all get out if I was able to “retire” these apps. First and foremost, I want webOS to succeed and to get wider recognition. These apps are a way for me to help

Do you do any development for other platforms?

My main other focus is straight up web apps. Obviously you have more freedom in a desktop browser, but the webOS experience combined with having it with me at all times can’t be beat! I also run Linux at home, so having webOS tools available on Linux is a big deal to me, and one reason I haven’t tried anything for iOS.

What’s your take on the current state of webOS development?

The current state of webOS development is, in a word, “weird”. I’ve basically stopped working on Mojo (except for bug fixes to my existing apps) and trying to figure out Enyo, but this means I won’t have any new apps for phones until sometime later this year, when Enyo is available for them. It’s frustrating, but I only have a limited amount of time to work on development and I can’t justify writing code that I’m going to have to throw away in the near future.

Where do you see webOS development going in the future? In particular, how do you see Enyo and devices like the TouchPad running webOS 3.0 affecting your development?

I think the long-term future for webOS is exciting. HP seems to be pouring a lot of resources into developing and promoting webOS, and I’m really looking forward to the TouchPad. Enyo is a much cleaner development platform than Mojo was, and after some growing pains I’m liking it more and more.

Short-term, the Mojo to Enyo transition is going to be painful; there’s no way around it. Porting my apps to Enyo meant rewriting large chunks of them, which wasn’t a lot of fun. I’m not sure how many developers are going to go to this trouble, but I’m hoping when the TouchPad is released it will attract new developers to the platform.

There hasn’t been much announced about how Enyo apps will scale down to the phone, and I’m hoping HP is putting a lot of thought into it since it seems like a sticky problem.

Given the chance, what’s the one thing you would change about the webOS development process?

The developer relations team at HP is flat-out awesome. Having said that, it feels like they’re chronically understaffed - when they do respond to forum posts, etc., they’re very helpful, but it can be a little hard to get their attention. I should say that this is already better than it used to be, but they still seem a bit short-staffed…

What are you working on right now?

As I mentioned, I’ve been working on getting FlightPredictor, We the People, GAuth, and PasswordHash working on the TouchPad. I’m planning to port all my apps, but those are the ones I’m focusing on now. I’m also working on a TouchPad version of my same-sex marriage map because a tablet form-factor should show it off nicely

I’ve also been doing a bit of webOS freelance work on the side - if anyone needs apps worked on (and can make them look good on their own), drop me a line!

Thank you so much for your time. Any parting thoughts for the webOS community?

It’s been a long time in the desert, but the promised land is coming very very soon. I think the wait will have been worth it!

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