Voenix Technologies is a Toronto mobile app startup. Offering smart solutions leading to the upcoming digitization era, this startup is also eager to provide practical eco-friendly applications. Their innovative first product, V-scanner, is designed to offer a seamless and user-friendly content integration to the digital environment while simplifying daily tasks. I spoke with Michael Bojarski to find out more about him and his work at Voenix Technologies.
Why did you choose to study Computer Science?
I was initially interested in Architecture, but then Web design was also one of my interests. That's what got me into Computer Science. Which, in turn, evolved into different programming languages. Through experience in the industry, it tied together the back and front end (that is what we call full-stack)
I felt the IT industry was still fresh, but you could tell it was going to be something that would stay for a long time. Those times were more exciting because it was all new, nowadays it is a bit more standardized. The exciting thing now is mobile, because you can do whatever you want with various devices.
What's your favourite algorithm and programming language feature?
Well, I do not have a favourite algorithm. But I will say this; there are many ways to code one specific feature or implement a solution. I like the simple way. ( KISS - Keep it simple stupid.)
KISS is a design philosophy that stems from the idea that keeping things simple is the best way forward. (Occam's razor). It is more like a life philosophy, but I like to apply it to my coding.
I like well-written and well-organized syntax. From experience working with companies with large systems and dealing with complex code, one can benefit far more from neat and straightforward code. Additionally, simplicity is essential for maintainability, to remember what you wrote in the future.
How do you keep yourself up-to-date with the latest technology?
That's a matter of dedicating time to finding new resources; it is easy these days with the internet. But it is also about finding the good ones, you can go insane trying to find information, and you need to see what is important to you. You can follow the latest trends in architecture, security, and DevOps. These are all good things; generally, one person will not be responsible for all this. So, it would depend on the department you work for. You would follow the leaders and the providers to see what they are planning and developing and choose the ones you want. It would be best if you focused on your business needs.
Can you tell me about your professional life up until now?
Regarding professional life, the first few years were very exciting because as an inexperienced junior developer I was very keen to learn from very smart and experienced people.
As the years went by, and especially as I transitioned into more of a leadership/management role and stopped developing for the most part.
Lately I've been having much more fun learning new things on my own, I find this is the best way to progress my own career, learning and trying out new technology stacks after regular work hours.
This year my drive for programming has grown to new heights, and I want to continue learning and developing for as long as I can.
What was your experience of coding your V-scanner app?
I initially wanted to code it in Kotlin because it seems pretty popular for Android, but then moved to Flutter. I set up the environment locally and got a test app running on my phone. From there, I started the project and learned along the way. Flutter was surprisingly good to work with. It's easy to learn, the layout ideas are similar to CSS FlexBox, which I am familiar with, so it was an easy transition. Flutter is based on Dart, which I didn't know and had to learn, but my full-stack web background helped me tremendously. The nice thing about Flutter is that they have a lot of plugins you can use. If you have an idea for a screen, then chances are there are plugins for you. Other things can be a bit more challenging. The best part of it is that it seems to create almost identical Android and iOS apps. I will encourage people to use it if they want to develop apps. We are also experimenting with Rive and other tools, but it's critical to remember that those need a strong background and artistic skills.
What are some of your business needs now?
Technically we need to start focusing on our backend services, which means we need to create cloud-hosted services that our apps will eventually use. These would be services that we can change and modify accordingly and scale. For example, we want to transform our OCR into a cloud-based one.
We are also working on creating a way to promote and receive users' feedback, so we need a better line of communication with our users.
Where do you want your app to move?
Eventually, we will add more recognition features such as table recognition. These features will allow people to scan different formats, and it would be more open and integrated into different work scenarios.
We want to consolidate other publicly available tools into the app, such as translations; a good one would be grammar check and spell-check. We want our app to become a suite of tools, which means everything would happen inside the application. As I mentioned earlier, it would be good to have the users' accounts in the backend in order to have a cloud-based app because we want all the information stored in the cloud, users accounts and files and folders. So, we are excited to continue working with V-scanner. A lot of our work will be feedback based.
What are your business goals? What are your plans?
My business goals are to continually analyze user needs and deliver products that can meet those requirements. For example, I consider V-scanner still in its early stages of development with lots of new features yet to be added. We certainly would like to expand our product suite beyond V-scanner. It's a matter of finding relevant products and services that are desirable. So, we have a couple of other things we are currently working on, which will align with our vision of creating functional apps that serve a broad range of users, creators, businesses and other institutions.
What inspires you to keep going?
For me, it's a love of technology and development. I love to code. If we can create great products that are in tune with our users' needs and our vision, then that is the source of my inspiration.
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