Coding for Fitness & Music
André Crabb is a Mobile Engineer at iFit.
High school is the time to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, right? Not exactly, but like many high school students, André was met with the pressures to make a decision on what type of career he wanted to pursue in the future. At the time, André knew exactly what he didn’t want to do, yet no idea what he did want to do.
It wasn’t until André’s dad introduced him to a friend who was a construction engineer that André discovered his interest in computer science. While shadowing his dad’s friend, he stepped into the computer server room at the company’s headquarters, and was immediately drawn in by the big machines and flashing lights — “the brains behind the entire operation” in one room.
It was a perfect mix, combining his passion for computer science with music.
Four years later, André graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and accepted his first full-time job at Pandora. It was a perfect mix, combining his passion for computer science with music.
At Pandora, his team focused on connected devices. As many know, Pandora’s main platform is the mobile app, however, with more and more connected technology they needed to ensure that there was a high-quality Pandora experience across a wide range of devices. His projects included refreshing the Chromecast user interface, refactoring the mobile Chromecast speakers for IOS and Android, and spearheading the Apple CarPlay integration.
As he gained more experience in his career and life, André also discovered other passions including fitness and traveling, and decided to shift careers to give himself a better work/life balance. This decision eventually led him to join the remote engineering team at iFit in March 2017.
Once you understand one programming language, it is easy to learn others.
iFit is a health-tracking standard used to bring together fitness activities, all with a single login and device. Due to his previous experience with devices and apps for Android and IOS, it was an easy career transition. Once you understand one programming language, it is easy to learn others.
iFit has multiple apps, one of which is for workout equipment like treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, etc. André works on the code that is shared among the many iFit apps, but his main focus is on the cardio app. One recent application that they built gives people the opportunity to follow along with actual courses through Google Maps on their own stationary bikes!
No matter what you’re doing or what you want to do… you can find something within computer science.
Looking back, André is very thankful for his exposure to computer science in high school. No matter what you’re doing or what you want to do… you can find something within computer science!
What tools and programming languages does André use?
- C#
- Swift
- IOS
- Android
- Xamarin
- Visual Studio
- Github
- Sourcetree
- Bitrise
Outside of work, you can find André working out at an outdoor gym, reading personal growth & success books at a cafe, or salsa dancing the night away!
Check out his personal website: www.andrecrabb.com
