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The state of iOS and Android apps are an embarassment to the Stack Overflow company.

I'd like to understand the management thought process here. You have a product that connects between developers and job-seeking companies, but couldn't find one iOS developer and one Android developer to maintain your apps?

Or, if you really, really, couldn't afford two developers, why weren't these apps open-sourced, so that willing developers from the community would help?

For a supposedly tech-oriented company, these apps and the state they are in are an embarrassment.

Regarding duplicates so far:

I don't see how my question and the linked questions are duplicates. I know the apps are dead. I know SO has not open sourced them. This is about the general state of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange as a company and their supposed tech-orientation.

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  • Possible duplicate of Open sourcing Stack Exchange Android App – user416943 Dec 15 '18 at 13:09
  • They had two devs - one's still around, but the priorities changed I guess. – Journeyman Geek♦ Dec 15 '18 at 13:12
  • Is Stack Overflow in financial difficulties? It is not very difficult to find two more. – Leo Natan--reinstate Monica Dec 15 '18 at 13:15
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    @LeoNatan Whatever their financial status, they've decided there are higher priorities for spending their cash than updating the apps. Right now, they're prioritizing making the website responsive so they don't need a separate app. If you want to make a FOSS SE app, go ahead, their API and terms are public and publicly documented. – Dan Bron Dec 15 '18 at 13:56
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    Whatever "responsive" fad is implemented on the website, it will never match a well made app, which is what the iOS app used to be. This is a sentiment that is held by many of the Stack Overflow community. – Leo Natan--reinstate Monica Dec 15 '18 at 14:12
  • It's all about numbers. It boils down to the fact that not enough people downloaded the app. – Shadow The Princess Wizard Dec 17 '18 at 12:48
  • The mobile version of the site works just well. – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Dec 18 '18 at 20:19
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This is one of those situations where I agree with the premise, but not the tone.

(Disclaimer - in spite of the diamond, I'm not an SE employee, and anything I say should be taken with a extremely large mountain of salt)

SE actually had a pair (Brian Nickel was the IOS developer, and is around still, and Kasra was the Android developer - and stuck around for quite a while after the android app was on life support.)

I've occasionally felt the SO/SE as a company sometimes has a little bit of attention defect. Some projects got started up, and never worked out, or priorities shifted.

Now, I'm making a slightly unscientific wild guess but I think the SE app was a victim of, well, mobile apps no longer being cool, the shift to focusing on SO (which resulted in the wildly unpopular attempt at a purely SO app) - as well as the focus on the "side" gigs like documentation and careers... and momentum just fizzled.

In theory, there can be an open source app - quite a few seem to exist and no longer maintained from a cursory look at the android tag.

Personally I mainly use it for notifications (which is replacable).

I don't think its purely a matter of money, and SE probably can afford to keep the lights on. Its just not something that seems a priority to them.

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    Thank you. The tone, probably sounding entitled, is coming from a frustration of tech companies making bad choices regarding mobile. They had something working, and fizzled it up for what appears to be silly reasons. Tasking mobile devs with other projects sounds like a waste of these devs' time, and that's a shame. At least on iOS, the app was really well made and the care of the developer was felt. Replacing that app with "responsive" nonsense is just bad for the community. – Leo Natan--reinstate Monica Dec 15 '18 at 14:27
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    I don't have any Android devices but I use the iOS app daily (I'm using it now) and find it meets my needs for most things. I can't delete posts or see deleted ones but it's easy enough to view in Safari in those cases. My understanding is that the Android app is much less functional, so I can understand being frustrated by that. I don't think the traffic from the apps is particularly high, though, which may be something of a catch 22: low traffic makes us unlikely to improve it but less likely it'll be used. – Catija♦ Dec 15 '18 at 15:17
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    @Catija the iOS app is x10 superior to the android app since it had a dedicated developer who fixed almost all its bugs and implemented tons of requests, including many nobody ever asked for. (The android app developer wasn't dedicated to it in the sense he was also the mobile apps team leader, taking lots of his time to management tasks, and for about a year he didn't work at all due to personal condition. Both leading to the android app being without a single developer, long before it was officially announced as "on hold") – Shadow The Princess Wizard Dec 17 '18 at 12:43
  • I use the website on mobile since I first gave it a chance and would never go back. It's vastly superior to the app. Your point is nonsense, @Leo. Real human profit from it, please stop denying the validity of the responsive site. – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Dec 24 '18 at 21:09
  • Enlighten me how exactly is my view from my experience nonsense? Or how the website is a "vastly" superior? @FélixGagnon-Grenier – Leo Natan--reinstate Monica Dec 24 '18 at 21:17
  • Replacing that app with "responsive" nonsense those are your words. No, my whole experience with the responsive site is not nonsense, thank you very much. You gave no example whatsoever of the inferiority of the website, you are in no position to demand it of others. – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Dec 24 '18 at 21:19
  • Push, superior text editing, better search, better organization. @FélixGagnon-Grenier – Leo Natan--reinstate Monica Dec 30 '18 at 19:49

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