The transition back into working life after a break I always find challenging, so over the years I've developed a handful of "tricks" to help me get moving again.
One of which is my "Accomplish One Thing" rule, which helps me to start building up my working inertia again.
I wrote up my approach here in the hopes that it might help anyone else staring into the wide-open expanse of work and feeling rather daunted by it.
https://www.david-smith.org/blog/2025/01/10/accomplish-one-thing/
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
In part 3 of our "Tools in our Toolbox" series @marcoarment
and I discuss the various assistance tools we use in making our apps. Starting with documentation and ending with LLM-powered code generation tools…veering into a bit more of a esoteric discussion about what the job we are actually trying to do is. https://www.relay.fm/radar/309
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Just published Part 2 of our Under the Radar series about the tools we use to make our apps.
This time we talk about Simulator improvements and Source Control. Discussing how we use SimGenie, Bezel, RocketSim, iPhone Mirroring, Xcode Cloud, Tower, Kaleidoscope & Juxtacode.
https://www.relay.fm/radar/308
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
For the latest Pedometer++ update I built a Trends view which lets you examine your walking history at a variety of degrees of granularity. It has been doubly fun to work on this feature was coincident with a renewed effort in my own fitness.
In mid-October I started to be more consistent in my activity...which I can now clearly see in the Weekly view. I find that gentle upward shape so very encouraging, I AM actually making progress, and I can know that with confidence now.
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The Blackmagic Immersive video camera they previewed at WWDC has been fully announced ($30k, ships end of 25Q1). https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/media/release/20241217-01
What really intrigues me about it is when/if it will show up for rental. I have a few tentative ideas in this space I'd love to explore but I don't think would justify the cost of owning one.
Looks like Lensrentals rents a vaguely similar, traditional Blackmagic camera kit for around $1,000/week...which would make experimentation much more accessible.
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
This is your periodic reminder that you almost certainly never mean “YYYY" in a date format string, you probably mean “yyyy”.
I’ve made this mistake many times, most recently back in 2020, but apparently I'm a very slow learner and made it again in my last update (😔).
You know you've really messed up when checking your understanding leads to one of these super vintage iOS documentation pages, and they specifically call out your mistake. (🤦🏻♂️)
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Right on cue it looks like we have entered the 'settling in' phase of the iOS 18 rollout. Just before thanksgiving Apple hit the “release to everyone" button, which caused a massive jump.
Now we are leveling off between 70-80%, where I expect we will remain going forward with a slow upwards drift.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
One of the less obvious skills needed to be a long term indie developer is dauntless optimism.
Every time I launch a new feature I get the feeling that “this is gonna be awesome, folks are gonna absolutely love this”...even though history has taught me it is actually not really true. Most feature launches are greeted more with a “meh” or “hmm, that's interesting"
...which is fine and goes with the job but nevertheless we keep on building, waiting for the “OH WOW!”s which do eventually come.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Looks like overnight the proper release version of Xcode was added to Xcode cloud (🎉).
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I get so confused (and frustrated) by the way Xcode Cloud rolls out final versions of Xcode. It's more than 24 hours since the final version of Xcode 16.2 was released, but Xcode cloud doesn't have it. This time it appears to be because there were multiple GMs (and it has an earlier one 🤷🏻♂️), but same thing has happened several times before.
A manual build directly with final Xcode from my Mac works, but that sidesteps all the consistency benefits of submitting direct from Continuous Integration.
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
On Under the Radar @marcoarment and I are starting a new series detailing the various tools we use in our app development work. Up first we discuss our Coding and Design tools, including TextMate, Base, Soulver, Sketch, CustomSymbols, Pastel, and PaintCode.
https://www.relay.fm/radar/307
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
My development process usually has 3 phases:
The first stage (“wandering”) is very exploratory. Where I'm trying loads of things, throwing half of it away and prototyping over and over until l land on the right path forward.
Then comes the “climb" where you do the actual work of building the thing, and have to deal with all the edge cases you ignore at first.
Then you crest that hill and begin the “polish”, where you refine things down.
Today I crested the hill on a big Pedometer++ update. 😁
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Modern CAPTCHAs can get pretty silly, but this sweet looking bear wearing a puffer coat in the grey woods is perfection.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Looks like just as I was speculating about last week, iOS 18 has now entered the “prompt more people to update” phase of its roll out.
Here's iOS 17's adoption graph for comparison. I’d expect that within a week or so iOS 18 will hit another plateau point (maybe around 60ish percent), and then start the continued steady growth from there.
It is really encouraging to now be in the place where more people are on iOS 18 than any other version.
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It is kinda wild to think that I've made at least 2,100 cups of coffee with my Aeropress in the last couple of years. Still by far my favorite method. Other than periodically needing to get filters it is so low fuss.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
(Probably worth mentioning that this isn't actually the UI I'm building...but a necessary intermediate building block) That UI would be mind bending (🤯) in the actual app.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
SwiftUI often feels like an embodiment of Alan Kay’s: “Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible”
It took quite a bit of head-scratching to get this to work, but I was eventually able to get three different ScrollViews (each with a differently scaled chart in them) to synchronously scroll in real-time w/ backwards compatibility to iOS 17 Phew… 😮💨
Though on mornings like this I do wish more stuff was in the “Simple Things" bucket rather than the “Complex Things” bucket.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
2/ I remembered Apple Health has a similar view, so I checked how they did it (realizing it might be a UIKit UIScrollView thing which would give you way more control).
Analyzing slo-mo footage of their switching I discovered they actually just kinda "cheat" and swap out a replacement chart which either animates from slightly wider or narrower than the final result. Which is a delightfully clever approach to a really tricky problem. Visually similar to a full solution but much simpler.
[#]##
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
1/ There is something deeply comforting when you struggle all day trying to find a solution for a problem only to discover that Apple couldn't/didn't solve it either.
I was trying to create a SwiftUI chart which could smoothly animate between different zoom levels (month, week, year) while keeping the users viewport on a similar date range. I'm pretty sure this isn't possible (even with the new iOS 18 scrollview stuff).
You can sort of get it in on the ends but not smoothly everywhere.
…
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It was around this time last year that Apple flipped the “roll out iOS 17 to everyone bit”, before that it was hovering around 30%.
This year seems to be following a similar pattern where after an initial surge the adoption has stalled out at a more steady state (45% for Widgetsmith, 35% for Pedometer++).
I really hope they hit the 'push it to everyone’ button soon (maybe with iOS 18.2?), it is frustrating to having iOS 18 features which are still unseen or explored.
https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/111442265683318863
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to _Davidsmith@mastodon.social account This content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).Proxy Information
text/gemini