Amazon Trivia Skill…Just the Beginning?

Amazon web developer overnight? I don’t think I can believe that, it would take much more than one night to do software development for a major tech company. Amazon has introduced game changing hardware to showcase Alexa a voice recognition software that is changing the way developers write code with Alexa Skills Kit, Amazon Developer Portal and the open source development. Now with just and hour or two anyone can build a “skill” for Alexa, using code samples and documentation supported by Amazon.

I took on the Trivia Skill first, where Amazon provides documentation and a code base that can be cloned from github.com, and you can develop your own Trivia game and learn the ins and outs of being a Amazon developer . I found the most interesting part of this journey the simple fact that with some creative thinking and a bit of coding I could put an imprint on a vast infrastructure that is being built daily. A vastly fulfilling feeling to be apart of such a vast world of development.

Challenges did arise as I took on the new phase in my developer career, my background is based on building/coding different web based applications which are very different to build and debug. First off, there is nothing to see when building a “skill” there is only if it passed the tests and Alexa responses correctly to your code. You don’t know how to debug until you learn how to debug it sounds redundant but it’s only being said because it feels that most of your coding background might not help when trying to make your skill work unless you sit down and slug threw documentation and fix your own mistakes.

Questions for Alexa as a whole are quite varied I don’t think the technology has been fully developed so there are immense possibilities that are available to be developed I would like to see what outside API’s (Application Program Interface) or different data that can be used to develop certain skills. I am extremely excited about the opportunities to come regarding such dynamic programing projects.