Meet Alex Ziskind, Developer Expert for NativeScript

Alex Ziskind is an accomplished expert, specializing in NativeScript training. He recently launched NativeScripting.com, a site with quality video courseware. In this interview, he discusses his focus as the creator of the first NativeScript school!

This post is part of 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?

During the early years, I started tinkering with static websites, then transitioned to ASP and .NET when it became available. When I started working in the government sector as a contractor, building .NET web applications came in handy. Expanding around that ecosystem, I ventured into WPF, Silverlight (which I still miss), and SharePoint consulting when I went out on my own. I'm glad that a friend pushed me into JavaScript around 2006 as it turned out to be my second language (after C#) today. These days I try to keep up with the latest JavaScript frameworks, but mostly I deal with Knockout, Angular, and NativeScript on a day to day basis.

Where are you based and why?

Washington DC is the place I've called home now for more than a decade. Many friends have moved here from much colder places, like Buffalo, and the job market here has been a blessing so far. 

With whom are you working?

I’m working with great leaders in NativeScript community, people like Nathan Walker, who is an Angular guru and who has authored the plugins course on NativeScripting. Paul Halliday, another leader, seems to instantly grasp and break down whatever technology he touches. Paul created the @ngrx course for NativeScripting and is working on more. Sean Perkins is a force to reckon with with his deep understanding of performance. Sean is currently finishing up the NativeScript styling course and has big plans for more training content.

What project are you working on now?

I’m currently building out training material and video courses for the training site NativeScripting.com. The goal is to have this be the most comprehensive NativeScript training place where students can learn from industry experts in NativeScript. So far we have four amazing trainers sharing their knowledge, and we're working on getting more. 

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

Recently I’ve been working more and more with animations and interactive user interfaces. In recent projects I’ve been using RxJS quite a lot for interaction. RxJS is an amazing library that can be used in any version of NativeScript, whether you’re working with NativeScript Angular, or NativeScript Core with TypeScript, or just NativeScript and JavaScript, you can take advantage of its capabilities. I’ve been using RxJS for event processing as well as animating UI.

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

There are some really cool new technologies coming out, specifically around NativeScript and Angular. The challenge is keeping up with them and making sure that students taking courses at NativeScripting are getting the latest information.

Which of our products do you use and why?

Primarily I use NativeScript as it relates to my day to day work with the school and mobile apps that I develop. Progress also makes the NativeScript UI bundle which is very handy and I include it in most projects. I’ve also used Kendo UI for my web applications in the past, which is a beautiful little library. I feel great about using Progress products because I feel their values align really well with my own; user interface is just as important as the feature sets and functionality. 

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

It's really difficult to find the time to get things done.