Meet Brian Kayfitz the developer behind Visited as he answers the most asked questions among other mobile developers.

  1. How did the idea come about? My girlfriend now wife, could not keep track of all the countries that she has visited. She would spend the good duration of our flights back home counting the number of countries she has been to. When I mentioned use an app, we could not find one we liked. So I decided to build it. We never expected it to be so successful.
  2. How do you decide what features to add? This is a tough one, as users usually have many requests which time does not permit. I run my own development agency, Brian Kayfitz Developments and usually my clients requests come first. Therefore, we prioritize based on the number of requests and the ease of implementation. For example, if someone has a new experience they want to add, it is a very quick process as oppose to adding cities which we have not found a good way to display it yet.
  3. What programming language was Visited Written? For iOS it was written in Objective-c and Java was used for Android. I prefer native languages as produces a much better user experience, although Flutter is starting to be my favourite framework.
  4. Do you plan to migrate to Flutter?  I like Flutter as it is very stable and is multi platform. My recent projects are usually using Flutter. However, re-written a well written app can bring on risks. Therefore, for now we will continue to maintain the app using the original code.
  5. What API did you use to build the map view? Using OpenGL for Android version and CoreGraphics for iOS app.
  6. How many countries have you visited? To-date I have been to 24 countries however, I do wish to visit a total of 67 countries.
  7. How many hours would it take to build a similar app? It would take a full time developer at least a year to build it for both platforms. While it seems like a simple app it is not as simple as it requires high expertise in multiple areas.

Brian Kayfitz is available for freelance mobile app projects, learn more on www.briankayfitz.com