This section describes a few related items about the app. It covers an overview of the company, the developer (and the type of work he’s looking for), as well as a history of the app and how it ended up in the form it is today. That may be of interest for people who wonder how these things actually get built.
Company Overview
X3 Pty Ltd started as three people back in 2006. Obviously we didn’t have a great deal of imagination when coming up with that company name. It made a few products in the occupational health and safety area which were well received but never quite reached the level of sales to push on to the next level. With one active developer remaining it’s now writing products for the fitness market. The original Press Play and Go was the first product in that area – App Store link – and this site is the home of the next version of that.
My Details
Hi. I’m Graham. The short version of my working experience is that I’m a SwiftUI iOS developer designing and building the app you see on this site. It connects to an Azure SQL Server backend accessing web services written in C# using REST / JSON. That handles the account management and data synchronisation across multiple devices using Core Data as the iOS store. The associated uploader utilities were written for the Mac and also Windows. All code across these platforms was written by me using the native APIs with RevenueCat being the only external library used.
The iOS app makes heavy use of concurrency in order to provide the level of functionality and responsiveness that all customers expect.
The operational processes and tools used for data matching were designed, created, and are used by me. I also run the social media and support channels and think I have built up a decent relationship with my customers over the years. I am now creating instructional videos for the YouTube channel as a number of users said they find it easier to watch instead of read.
This site uses WordPress and the Enfold theme because graphics designer isn’t my highest-rated skill. I’m far better as a writer and have composed all the text you see on here without resorting to ChatGPT.
Note that the Building the app pages are worth a read if you’re thinking of hiring me as it describes a few problematic situations that cropped up during the development lifespan of the app. I show how I worked through or around them, how successful that was, and what I learned from it. They can be found with the initial product here and the current one here. There’s also a bit here on what I wish I’d done differently.
The ongoing blog posts where I provide updates on what I’ve learned can be found using the Latest menu item at the top of each page.
If you attend the Sydney Cocoaheads Apple programmer meetings please say hello.
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-nealon-98145333/
Technical Skills
| iOS mobile development: | Swift / SwiftUI / UIKit / Objective-C |
| Data management: | SQL Server / Core Data / JSON / MySQL / Access |
| Web technologies: | Azure / AWS / Web services |
| Software design: | MVVM & MVP / Multithreading / UX/UI / Multi-user architecture / Localisation |
| Past programming languages: | C / C++ / C# |
Business Skills
| Communication: | Excellent verbal and writing skills |
| Learning: | Very quick to pick up new concepts and skills, especially those which build off prior experience |
| Engagement: | Able to interact in a professional manner with all levels of an organisation / Have worked successfully in teams of all sizes / Good at making suggestions |
| Customer interaction: | Providing customer support through email and social media channels / Creating written user manuals / Creating video tutorials |
Work History
These are the main ones. As with all careers there’s a few short-term contracts in there with which I won’t bore you.
Solo indie work
My official roles in this are developer, designer, tester, customer support, administration, web site author, bookkeeper, and company director. In short if it needs to be done and you can’t do it – learn it.
The main achievement was building the app you see on this site. Click the links above for all the aspects of that.
ANZ, Sydney, Australia
I’ve worked here as a data analyst and developer on contract over the years.
The main one was for the Banking Remediation project. This involved achieved data cleansing and matching to identify customers adversely affected by wrongful banking practices. If the Banking Royal Commission rings a bell it was related to that. It involved designing and building a fuzzy matching system in SQL Server to cross-reference data from a dozen separate areas to ensure all the accounts relating to a customer were found. They could then be given refunds for being overcharged across the years. The historical data stretched back to 2006, contained over 500,000 records, and required 43 billion comparisons. It resulted in significant successful matches despite changes over the years in customer names and addresses.
Citibank, London, England
I spent a few years working in the UK and spent a large chunk of that as an analyst and developer.
The main role was developing a share trading system linking Citibank to the Frankfurt market. This included the SQL Server database and business applications. It replaced a largely manual process and allowed the bank to increase income from the (then) second-largest European financial market. It gained a reputation for ease-of-use and stability from business users and technical support staff and was regarded as the most reliable of the bank’s European share trading systems. Most of that stability came as a side-effect of just talking to people in the business, customer, and support departments and making sure that everyone knew what was happening in each of the related departments. It was not a radical concept but seemed to be a rare one at the time. I suspect it was one of the reasons Aussie IT people were so sought after in that city at the time.
I do remember one of my first tasks being to write an installer for the production support team. So I did the obvious thing of finding out where they were located, went in, introduced myself, said I had been asked to do this task for them and what did they need from it. The whole place went silent like those old Western movies when a stranger walks into the saloon. The manager – a massive bear of a man – looked me up and down then growled “I’ve worked here for seven years and this is the first time a developer has ever asked us what we want. Sit down and I will tell you”. He ended up happy and when the others saw I came back alive it seemed to start eroding whatever problems existed between the groups. Everyone ended up with a better working relationship which produced the most important thing – a far better and reliable set of systems for the customers.
There was the learning of financial concepts involved in designing and building modules to process SWIFT files and handle alleged market trades. That resulted in the decommissioning of an expensive mainframe module and removing at least forty hours of manual work per week from the business area.
Westpac, Sydney, Australia
Spent many years here as an analyst, designer, and developer and got to work with a wide range of technology. I think we were the first place in Australia to write a system using OS/2 (look it up in the ancient history books).
Probably the thing I remember most fondly is designing and building application and infrastructure software for branches, the mortgage processing centre and telephone banking (that was cutting-edge in pre-internet days). It ran on at least 5,000 machines and was a critical part of the technology rollout which helped the bank recover after financial difficulties.
A related area of that was writing software to allow externally developed products to easily interface with the Westpac systems. This greatly reduced the development time of all applications using the infrastructure.
That was not only for use by internal developers but also the two very large consulting firms which had been brought in. Learning how to deal with and manage those external entities which may have held very different views from resident employees on what they wanted to achieve was an important skill.
Writing
The most relevant to the app is when I attended a Les Mills filming but there’s a few from when I used to write for football fanzines.