Three Years

Mar 19, 2018

My experience working on the YouVersion Bible app.

Working on one of my most used apps has been the dream come true. It’s humbling knowing that my role contributes to people’s lives getting changed.

I’ve learned so much over the past 3 years. Before YouVersion I was teaching myself iOS development. I was able to create small apps by myself. I had no true coding style. Each new project would look slightly different based on the latest technique I picked up. I had a decent grasp of what it looked like building a minimal app. Working on an app at scale has taught me so much.

Working in a professional environment with other developers has been such a rewarding experience. I now have adopted a solid coding style and I keep getting better and better at problem solving. The 2 week sprint workflow helps me focus on completing specific goals. At the end of every sprint we come together as a team and share what we accomplished.

I’ve had the opportunity to work on a bunch of interesting features. Some of my favorites include Bible Keyboard and Plans With Friends. Bible Keyboard is a iOS keyboard extension. It allows a user to browse scripture based on emotion. It also has the ability to expand a scripture reference as you type. For example, if you start typing John 3:16 and hit the Lookup button, the reference gets replaced with the passage.

Plans With Friends was another project I am thankful I was able to be apart of. It was a unique adventure for our team. We split off part of the engineering team into a feature specific team for this project. It took almost 9 months from beginning to end. At the end we had a great feature to release. Now users will be able to engage with the Word in a meaningful way with their friends.

The atmosphere at work is fantastic. It's very encouraging to see how well the team scores on the satisfaction surveys we take every year. I look forward to going into work everyday. I love my job.