The iOS Development Podcast
Episode 283: iPS 282: The Art of Designing Code with Mischa Hildebrand
In this episode of the iPhreaks Show the panel interviews, Mischa Hildebrand, asking about a talk he gave at iOS Conf 2019. Mischa has a very varied background, he studied to become a physicist, then did some journalism on television and radio before finally going into iOS development. His background in journalism gave a unique perspective into writing code that is beautiful and easy to understand. Mischa shares principles from his days in journalism and applies them to programming. The panel shares their experiences working on legacy or unclear code, the describe the pain it was to interpret the code. Mischa’s principles while nothing new address the problems that turn into painful code. First, use short sentences, in other words, keep your lines short. Also, use simple language. The panel discusses what it means to use an active voice versus a passive voice. Another rule is to give one piece of information per sentence, this allows other developers to easily follow the code and its purpose. Panelists Alex Bush Christina Moulton Guest Mischa Hildebrand Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Links Law of Demeter The Art of Designing Code - iOS Conf SG 2019 https://miro.medium.com/max/2810/1*EJr5q4QqkY3hshPLEgJVQQ.png Code is a Language! https://medium.com/@PhiJay http://mischa-hildebrand.de/en/ https://twitter.com/derhildebrand?lang=en https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Christina Moulton: Cleaning Up With Swift Defer Flour Water Salt Yeast Mischa Hildebrand: https://bear.app/ XCoordinator Alex Bush: POODR
Episode 282: iPS 281: Our Builds
In this episode of the iPhreaks Show the panel introduces themselves and discusses their favorite tools and what their builds look like. They share their journeys in iOS development and their experiences in large teams compared to smaller teams. They consider how iOS has changed since they first started iOS development. The panel discusses what CI/CD’s they are using. They discuss, Xcode, VScode and the Dash app. They move on to testing, explaining that they generally use what apple provides unless they need something that digs a little deeper. They discuss Fastlane as a deployment tool. Tools they use for crash reports include Sentry, Xcode, and Crashlytics. For debugging the panel discusses Reveal, Sourcetree, SwiftLint, Charles proxy, and Pony debugger. Charles wonders what they prefer for their backend. Alex Bush explains that it depends on the size of the company. Larger companies prefer custom-built backends. They consider Ruby on Rails, Realm, and Runscope for smaller companies. Panelists Alex Bush Charles Max Wood Christina Moulton Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Links https://revealapp.com/ https://kapeli.com/dash https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/ https://www.sharemouse.com/ https://www.charlesproxy.com/ https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Christina Moulton: Finding slow code with Instruments Charles Max Wood: Disney+ Frozen 2
Episode 281: iPS 280: Siri Shortcuts with Christina Moulton
In this episode of the iPhreaks Show the panel interviews Christina Moulton. She starts by sharing her story and how she got into iOS development. The panel briefly discusses her work at Square and what she does there. The panel asks her about her talk at try!Swift about Siri Shortcuts. The panel asks Christina what terminology to use when discussing Siri shortcuts, she explains that the terminology is so confusing. Shortcuts are simple from the app’s perspective but Christina shows the panel just how complicated they are from the systems perspective. She defines intents for the panel and explains how filing intents are what creates these shortcuts. These shortcuts can do so much and the panel considers the uses of these shortcuts in home automation. Just by entering or leaving your home you trigger a series of shortcuts that powered down your house and lock up or turn on the lights and texts your family. They also consider how the system predictions the needs of the user. The panel discusses the visual and voice output and the quality of each on different devices. They wonder at the regulations and testing apple puts towards these intents and shortcuts. Christina explains how she tests intents and shortcuts to make sure that they create a working Siri flow. The panel compares other SDKs and Siri. Christina finishes the episode by sharing a bit about her book. Panelists Alex Bush Charles Max Wood Guest Christina Moulton Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Links https://grokswift.com/ https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Christina Moulton: Designing Great Shortcuts Alex Bush: So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love Charles Max Wood: It’s a Wonderful Life Holiday Inn White Christmas A Christmas Story
Episode 280: iPS 279: Serverside Swift with Gopal Sharma
In this episode of the iPhreaks Show the panel interviews Gopal Sharma who gave a talk at try! Swift 2018 about serverside Swift. He starts by sharing his background and how got into building stuff for the serverside. In his talk, Gopal outlined what is expected in a serverside framework and explains where Swift was at. The major things looked for in a serverside framework are performance and predictability. Swift has the basic building blocks of a serverside framework and Gopal shares what makes Swift unique. Its been over a year since his talk and Gopal tells the panel that things have improved for serverside Swift since then. Gopal explains that the real reason to use serverside Swift is for Neo. Vapor and Kitura are the Swift frameworks built on top of Neo. Gopal compares these too frameworks and walks the panel through the specifics of each one. They discuss how each handles requests, databases, migration, template-based rendering, and microservice environments. The panel discusses which frameworks should be used for different projects. They share their preferences for ORMs and weigh the costs and benefits of using ORMs. Gopal explains why he prefers to just use SQL and avoid ORMs. Shawn shares tips for using ORMs and explains how they save him time and make him more efficient. Panelists Alex Bush Shawn Clabough Guest Gopal Sharma Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Links Swift on Server: Are We There Yet https://vapor.codes/ https://www.kitura.io/ https://twitter.com/gopalkri https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Gopal Sharma: https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift http://diesel.rs/guides/getting-started/ https://github.com/cashapp/sqldelight Alex Bush: The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph Shawn Clabough: Recreational Hockey
Episode 279: iPS 278: App Marketing Hacks with Steve Young
In this episode of the iPhreaks Show Charles Max Wood interviews Steve Young, founder of Appmasters.com.Steve shares was for apps to rise in rankings on the app stores. He shares specifics for both the Google and Apple app stores. The top thing people can do it to make sure they use keywords in titles, subtitles, and descriptions. He also explains the spanish-mexico localization. After explaining how he got into marketing, Steve shares more clever tips for getting your app to the top of the list. Continuing with keywords, he warns against cramming keywords because both Apple and Google will punish you for it. The key is finding the balance between keywords and readability. Figuring out what keywords to use takes a lot of work. Steve shares some services and resources that will do it for you. Other clever things you can do to find keywords include using common misspellings of keywords, not using spaces and using multiword keywords. They also discuss how ratings, categories, and screenshots improve rankings. Steve shares the best ways to get featured. Panelists Charles Max Wood Guest Steve Young Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Links App Masters Academy https://appfollow.io/ https://sensortower.com/ https://www.mobileaction.co/ https://www.apptweak.com/ Requesting App Store Reviews https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Steve Young: https://www.pushbullet.com/apps Charles Max Wood: Holiday Inn White Christmas
Episode 278: iPS 277: 100 Days of SwiftUI with Paul Hudson
In this episode of The iPhreaks Show the panel interviews well-known author Paul Hudson. Paul is the creator and editor of Hacking with Swift. He does talks all around the world and writes books about swift. Paul went to the recent WWDC and even managed to write a book while at the conference. The panel asks him about the conference. Paul explains that he didn’t go to many talks, instead, he uses that time to prepare for the labs. Curious the panel wonders at this strategy for conference attendance. Paul expounds, explaining there are only about 10 minutes of good stuff in a 40-minute talk once you get past the intros, jokes, stories and other filler. He can watch those online. His time is better spent playing with Swift and preparing questions for the labs. As for writing a book during the conference, he explains that the body can do amazing things when fueled by caffeine. He also made sure he was in the Marriot where the conference was held, that way he could walk downstairs and know that his swift code was correct. This saved him a ton of time worrying and second-guessing his code. The panel considers how SwiftUI has progressed. Paul explains how in the early days it was really hard to tell which features worked as designed. The beta used in the presentations at WWDC is not the beta given to developers, by the time developers get beta 1, Apple is already working on beta 3. He emphasizes the importance of filing your radars early because everything is changing so quickly. Paul goes onto explain that SwiftUI is learning from the mistakes of Swift. Swift had everything but none of it was great. SwiftUI is missing things but what it does have is great. Paul has a new program for learning Swift called 100 Days of Swift. For each of the 100 days, Pauls supplies an encouraging and educational article along with a kit. The kit includes chapters to read, videos to watch, tutorials, projects, assessments, and challenges. Paul put a lot of work into creating hours of free content. After SwiftUI was out for a few months he decided to do 100 Days of SwiftUI. His goal with these programs is that by doing these each day for less than an hour, you will graduate by Dec 31st, just in time for the New Year. The panel considers the wonderful things about this program and asks Paul about the feedback he has received from it. This program builds and leads to a goal. People are so proud of what they are accomplishing they can share it on social media. Paul works hard every day to make sure everyone feels welcome on his site and in his programs. Every day he finds people on twitter using the 100 Days of Swift hashtag and encourages them with positive feedback. Next, the panel discusses the dark corners of iOS 13 where all the new features that people are missing are. Paul explains that there are so many amazing new features in iOS 13 that have been drowned out by SwiftUI. These features include Cryptokit, Imagekit, SF Symbols, Core Haptics, improved core images, quality of life improvements, date-time formatter and many more. He explains a few of the features that he is really excited for and encourages listeners to check out all the features. Paul wonders if it is Apple’s plan to get as many developers to adopt iOS 13 with all these exciting new features. The panel considers how the poor documentation problem will hold developers back from adopting iOS 13. With poor documentation and only WWDC presentations to go off of many developers have to go looking to outside sources to learn how to use these tools. Considering how the documentation has gone down for years and the fact that Apple is so wealthy, Paul concludes that Apple has to have a greater plan for documentation in works. He predicts that it will be something more interactive to fit the learning trends of the day, bring people to iOS. The panel considers how iOS is becoming less programmerly and how this too may bring more people to iOS. Paul goes on a small rant about the chasm between iOS and Mac development. He explains how he is continually nagging whoever he can to see this fixed. Paul believes that the best way to align these to platforms is to bring Swift Playground to Mac. The episode ends with Paul explaining his app, Unwrap. Unwrap teaches Swift, it is opensource and free. With it, you learn Swift by earning badges, completing challenges and taking assessments. The panel loves that is open source and fun. Paul explains that this app and his 100 Days of Swift program are not just for beginners, programmers of all levels have told him how much they have learned from these resources. Panelists Abbey Jackson Evan Stone Jaim Zuber Guest Paul Hudson Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan My Ruby Story My JavaScript Story CacheFly ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $1. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Links iPS 243: Paul Hudson - Writing, Swift, & Writing Swift https://developer.apple.com/wwdc19/ https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100 https://www.hackingwithswift.com/quick-start/swiftui https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100/swiftui https://twitter.com/hashtag/100DaysOfSwiftUI?src=hash https://www.hackingwithswift.com/unwrap https://twitter.com/twostraws https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Abbey Jackson: SF Viewer App Evan Stone: Love Notes to Newton Einstein Paul Hudson: Swiftoberfest Spendo App
Episode 277: iPS 276: Automating Painful Things with David House
In this episode of The iPhreaks Show the panel interviews David House about Continous Integration and Continuous Delivery. David is an iOS developer currently living in Georgia. He has been working in iOS development since the iOS SDK was int beta. Right now he is working for a health care company, Kaiser Permanente. David starts by sharing how he became interested in this topic. Kaiser Permanente is a large enterprise and has large enterprise applications. Their iOS app has almost a million users along with employees who use the app as well. This led him to find a way to scale an app for a large app while also maintain quality and security. The panel asks David to breakdown the terms Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. David explains that neither of these terms was meant for mobile so they now have a different meaning. Originally, Continuous Integration meant you were integrating developer changes in an automated fashion. Continuous Delivery meant you were shipping out code in an automated fashion. Now CI/CD just means you can automate things and run them continuous through your workflow, not just integration and delivery. The panel wonders how automated systems have effected that end of the workday ritual of checking your daily build. David explains how automated pull request has made this ritual obsolete. He explains the shift left approach which is the idea is to shorten the time frame between submitting your build and receiving feedback. With the rise of the pull request, this timeframe has been significantly reduced, essentially giving you continuous feedback. Pull requests can be a pain at first but David explains how getting into a habit of using them can say developers a lot of pain and worry. David shares a life hack that also translates well to programming. The more you regulate the boring and the tedious the more room in your brain you have for interesting and new ideas. He equates this to automation. By automating the parts of your job that are tedious and painful, you free up time and brain space for the more interesting parts of your job. He uses the example of the pain and time it took to get an app into the app store, after automating that he had more time to do the cool parts of his job that he enjoys. The panel discusses how this can benefit the solo developer and not just a developer that is part of a team. The panel considers how automation affects the way developers learn, does help developers avoid learning to do something for themselves. Unfortunately, David believes that true. He recommends learning how to do the things your automated systems do, it may just save your butt when your system fails. He advises thinking of automated systems as a minion. It is there to do the tedious and painful jobs you don’t want to do yourself but you should still know what your minion is doing. The panel considers the various CI tools. David has used many different tools including Jenkins, Travis, CircleCI, Bitrise and the beta for Github actions. He explains that Bitrise is a great option, it is very visual and good for beginners. Github action will be good once it is released, the best part will be the community. Both Github action and Bitrise are opensource. Jenkins has been around forever, therefore, it has good roots and is powerful. However, Jenkins is not for everyone. David explains that there should be more tools to fill the spectrum of needs. The panel considers security in automated systems. David explains that it is hard to tell which automated systems are more secure. They consider ways to determine how secure an automated system is. Open source is one way, you can look for holes in the system by checking out the source code. Also, some systems have a reputation for security. The panel considers the lack of educational resources and good documentation for CIs. David shares how frustrating it can be to try and find a fix for a failed build in a CI. He shares some of his hopes for the future of CI including, rich feedback, documentation, and resources for learning automated systems. The episode ends with a discussion of Xcode bots. Peter Witham shares his experience using them. David explains that even though they have great user experience it is still really limited in what it can do. The panel finishes with some final advice for automating painful things. Panelists Andrew Madsen Peter Witham Guest David House Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan Dev Ed Podcast My Angular Story CacheFly Links https://www.bitrise.io https://twitter.com/davidahouse https://github.com/davidahouse https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Andrew Madsen: Human Interface Guidelines Infrastructure Peter Witham: https://plugins.jenkins.io/ David House: https://gitmoji.carloscuesta.me/
Episode 276: iPS 275: Finding Quality Packages using SwiftPM Library with Dave Verwer
In this episode of The iPhreaks Show the panel interviews Dave Verwer about his new SwiftPM Library. Dave is an iOS developer from the UK, he’s been working with iOS since the beginning. He is mostly known for his weekly email newsletter, iOS Dev Weekly, which is released every Friday afternoon. SwiftPM Library is a site that aims to make it easy for people to find quality packages that support the Swift Package Manager to integrate into their project. It is a repository of all the packages he can find and anyone can contribute packages to it. The CocoaPods Quality Index was his inspiration for this library. The CocoaPods Quality Index gives a quality score based on a few metrics, Dave wanted to do this but specifically for packages that support SwiftPM. The panel considers what this means for SwiftPM, which unlike most package managers it does not have a library of packages to use. Dave sees two outcomes for the SwiftPM Library, either it becomes the go-to place for people to discover new packages or Github package registry will come along and kill it. The Github package registry is a multiplatform, multilanguage tool for registering packages. Daves explains the features that SwiftPM Library has that gives it a fighting chance against the Github package registry. First, the SwiftPM Library was built with speed in mind. The Github package registry piggybacks on Github search which therefore will take longer. Also, Github is likely to list its packages in a way that he take those packages and include them in his library as well, so Github will not have more Swift supporting packages than the SwiftPM Library. Another thing that sets apart SwiftPM Library is that it is all about Swift. The Github package registry also supports other languages like Ruby and Java. It is doubtful that Github will have very many Swift specific features and metadata on their site, where at the SwiftPM Library Dave already has many of those in place. The panel asks Dave about SwiftPM and how it compares to CocoaPods and Carthage. He explains that SwiftPM is very similar to using Cocoapods, however, you can create a library using X code and also include other libraries as dependencies. He gives a brief walkthrough of how to replace CocoaPods with SwiftPM in a project. SwiftPM has a couple of limitations that the SwiftPM team is currently working on. Right now in SwiftPM, it does not support resources, such as zip files and images, in packages. Another major limitation of SwiftPM is that you cannot switch between languages in a Swift package. The panel considers these limitations and shares how they affect whether or not they choose SwiftPM. Once these problems are solved, Dave hopes that everyone will transition to SwiftPM. SwiftPM is managed by Apple, therefore, is a cleaner and better option even though the transition may be painful. The panel shares the things they like about SwiftPM, including how easy it is to use. It becomes so easy to update packages and dependencies after the transition. Back to the SwiftPM Library, the panel asks Dave more about it works. Dave explains how the quality index works, giving each package a score based on a few quality metrics. The value of a quality index comes from the need to be careful when adding a dependency. The search results on his site are based on the quality score of each package. The metrics Dave is currently using to measure are: Does it support the latest version of Swift? How many versions of the package have been released? How many stars does it have on its Github repository? Does the license file exist and is it an open source license that is unencumbered? The panel takes a look at what the search results look like. Dave includes everything a developer would need to know in order to choose the best package for their project. The search results highlight the license source. It includes how many libraries and executables are included in the package. The search results show what version of swift and other platforms are supported. Not only does it show you the master branch but also the latest stable version and the latest beta of the package when possible. Dave walks the listeners through how to contribute packages to the library. Dave explains his philosophy when it comes to running the site, his role is not a gatekeeper. He doesn’t want to decide which packages to include and which to exclude. His hope is that the quality indexing will sort the good from the bad. Anyone can add to the library and anyone can request a removal from the library. Any problems with packages should be deferred back to there maintainers. Panelists Jaim Zuber Abbey Jackson Gui Rambo Andrew Madsen Guest Dave Verwer Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan Adventures in .NET Adventures in Angular CacheFly Links Launching the SwiftPM Library Quality Indexes WWDC 2019 Keynote — Apple Github Package Registry Carthage Elasticsearch https://forums.swift.org/c/development/SwiftPM https://daveverwer.com/ https://twitter.com/daveverwer?lang=en https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Dave Verwer: Advice for Software Apprentices Jaim Zuber: https://iosdevweekly.com/ Try it using the RSS feed Andrew Madsen: iTerm 2 Gui Rambo: NES Emulator Part #1: Bitwise Basics & Overview NES Emulator Part #2: The CPU (6502 Implementation) NES Emulator Part #3: Buses, RAMs, ROMs & Mappers Abbey Jackson: https://cocoahub.app/
Episode 275: iPS 274: iOS Accessibility with Rob Whitaker
In this week’s episode of the iPhreaks Show the panel interviews Rob Whitaker, an expert in digital inclusion and accessibility. Rob starts by defining accessibility and explaining why it is important. He explains that 20% of the population has some form of disability, those customers need features to help the navigate applications. Everyone benefits from developers taking the time to think about their app works. Rob dives into some of the main areas developers should look at when making their apps more accessible. The first and biggest one is making sure apps support dynamic text. Dynamic text makes the biggest difference for most people. All Apple apps support dynamic text. Testing dynamic text is easy, and important; just increase the size of the text and make sure everything still looks okay and reads well. Also, dynamic text isn’t just about making text bigger, some users may prefer smaller text for privacy. With iOS 13 released, the panel asks about the new features for accessibility. Voiceover and Voice control are the big ones that will really unlock the way users can interact with applications. Voiceover will read the text and also describe pictures to the users. Voice control allows customers the ability to navigate applications much easier. Rob explains that in the UK there is an annual survey about internet use. Many people don’t use the internet because of a disability and inaccessibility of applications, of those many are physically disabled. Voice control can unlock the internet for them, allowing them access to tools and education that most people take for granted. Another new feature with iOS 13 is the grid view. Rob explains how this will be helpful navigating a map or something without explicit labels. He warns not to use it on pages where it could cover content. Testing accessibility is easy and quick. Rob encourages everyone to add it to their routine testing practices. The panel considers automated accessibility testing. Rob shares his disappointing experience with the tools currently available. The panel hopes that new tools will be made now that accessibility is finally getting more attention in the development world. Rob shares some of the common problems he sees in applications, such as making labels too long, marking things improperly whether accessible or not. For voiceover, he explains that it reads top left to the bottom right and when a display is designed out of order, the voiceover can be out of order and confusing. These problems can be easily avoided by swiping through and making sure that everything makes sense; he warns not to really on the visual display when doing this. Rob continues to give advice on making applications more accessible. Make sure you are clear about control labels and the consequences of a control. This comment inspires a realization in Peter, who shares an example of having two confirm buttons on the same page for different things and how that could be confusing to the users using voiceover and voice control. He and Rob consider ways to solve that confusion. Rob explains what accessibility hint is and how it gives extra context for things that might work differently than normal. Rob recently wrote an article on the European Accessibility Act. This is the first law of its kind that specifically mentions mobile. It also has categories and explains the requirements for each category. Rob explains how laws like these should incentives companies to make their applications accessible because if not they could be fined, while also alienating a portion of the population from buying your app. The episode ends with a discussion of Swift UI and how it can be a tool when it comes to accessibility. Rob explains how as a declarative UI it can make accessibility easier and more accurate. The panel considers the benefits of cross-platform accessibility since accessibility in a Mac app can be difficult. Panelists Jaim Zuber Peter Witham Guest Rob Whitaker Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan Adventures in DevOps Views on Vue CacheFly Links What the European Accessibility Act (Might) Mean for Mobile Development Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview https://twitter.com/RobRWAPP https://rwapp.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Rob Whitaker: Jon Gibbins Design meets Disability Peter Witham: Quiver
Episode 274: iPS 273: The Why's and How's of Keeping Current
In this week’s episode of The iPhreaks Show, Charles Max Wood (Chuck) shares some of his thoughts and advice for keeping current. He has started a keeping current email course through DevChat.TV and describes what lessons will be taught in this course. He encourages everyone to subscribe to the email course. This idea of keeping current is something Chuck has been thinking about for a while. He gives an intro to the subject, explaining the frustration programmers feel after the reach a level of knowledge in the developer community. They ask themselves what do I learn next? What should I be studying to stay current? Chuck counters that question with why. Why stay current? Chuck wants those who struggle with this to find their motivation behind staying current. He explains that if you are going to spend all this time to level up yourself you should have a goal to reach for. A common answer Chuck hears in response to this question is job mobility. Chuck shares some of his early motivations in staying current. It was partly wanting to stay competitive in the job market. Another part was wanting to sound smart. The last part was loving what he did and just wanting to learn more. Chuck gives advice for finding a job that you really want. He tells listeners to buckle down and really dive into the technologies at your current job so when you do go looking for a new one they know they can expect you to learn their technologies whether you know them or not. Another suggestion he gives is to find the company you want to work for and learn the technologies they are using. Your initiative and drive will impress them. Learning a skill for job mobility is okay but if you learn with a specific goal in mind the job mobility will come with it. Companies today hire based more on aptitude and compatibility than if you know the specific technologies they use. So Chuck's first bit of advice for staying current is to sit down and think of where you want to end up. Do you want to be a speaker, team lead, company engineer, blogger, podcaster or something else? He also tells listeners not to be afraid to change their end goal. Chuck explains that knowing why you want to stay current will help you know what to learn. Learning the technology a company uses is one example. If your goal is to speak at conferences, you might want to learn what topics are in demand, how to submit a good conference proposal, learn what people want to hear or what it takes to become a keynote speaker. If your goal is to become a blogger you will need to learn how to do SEO. If you want to become the software architect for your company you may need to improve your code organizational skills. The next question Chuck addresses is “how?”. Chuck recommends everyone get a plan. Some organizations like toastmasters have a plan already laid out. For those interested in blogging there is 31 Days to Building a Better Blog, a book that outlines step by step how to build a good blog. Courses and books can outline your plan, and if you can’t find one, write your own. When writing your own plan Chuck recommends finding someone who is doing what you want to do and ask them to list what you need to learn to do that thing. After that, you need to sit down and write out what and how you are going to learn. As Chuck has mentioned do not be afraid to change your goal. Chuck shares a time in college when he decided he wanted to go into patent law. He quit his IT job and took an internship. He hated it and within a few months had switched back to computers. So don’t be afraid to scrap your plan and do what will make you happiest. Now for the actual learning, Chuck explains that there are so many ways to learn podcasts, videos, blogs, books, and courses. He describes how he learns best and advises listeners to find out how they learn. If you know what works best for you, you can design your plan to fit your learning style. Chuck encourages listeners to try a bit of everything. He shares how his attitude toward books changed as he put their concepts into action and all because he tried everything. Also, something types are learning for conceptual learning while others are more suited for practical learning. Chuck explains how building and playing around with what you learn. He also encourages listeners to shares their experiences through blogs, video or podcasting. This way you will have a way to demonstrate what you learned. The last thing Chuck explains is that even after you've completed your plan sometimes these things take time. You may learn everything on your list only to find you have more things to learn before you reach your goal. Panelists Charles Max Wood Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan Adventures in Blockchain React Native Radio CacheFly Links Get a Coder Job https://devchat.tv/blog/how-to-stay-current-effectively-in-2019/ JSJ 387: How to Stay Current in the Tech Field 31 Days to Build A Better Blog https://thinkster.io/ https://www.pluralsight.com https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Charles Max Wood: Sometimes it takes time to get what you want
Episode 273: iPS 272: Apple Event Analyzation
Episode Summary In this episode of The iPhreaks Show Andrew Madsen and Evan Stone discuss the recent Apple Event and the announcements made there. To start, the panel discusses their thoughts one the event as a whole. The panel was surprised that the event was very product-driven with only a few mentions of software changes. Andrew did notice that when they did talk about the software they introduced it with the hardware as one product, which he enjoyed as a more holistic approach than in previous years. Apple Arcade and the games they featured is the next topic the panel discusses. Andrew explains that he is not much into gaming but even his interested was piqued by the games they demonstrated. Evan wonders how the games will translate across platforms. He is especially interested in how they will translate to the Apple TV. This brings them to a discussion of the Apple TV+. The panel considers the risk Apple is taking by only airing original content. They comment on the trailer for See that was shown at the conference. Andrew explains that they will have around 50 shows to start all over various genres. Evan brings up the very affordable price of only 5 bucks a month or free for a year when you buy an apple product. The panel considers how this strategy will help them build up an audience. Another product announced at the event is the apple watch series 5. The panel jumps into discussing the new health features. They share how impressed they were the videos that explained the new health features. Andrew wonders with all the amazing things the watch can do what will they come up with ten years from now. He and Evan consider the possibilities, warnings for heart attack or stroke, blood sugar monitoring and more. Moving on from the health features of the watch, the panel discusses a feature that has been a long time coming, the always-on screen. The panel considers why it took so long for this feature to come out. Evan shares his particular interest in this feature because of the safety hazards of looking at his watch while biking. Another new feature for the apple watch 5 is the added compass. The panel laughs as they never realized the watch didn’t have a compass especially because the apple watch 4 comes with GPS. The panel discusses how the compass may help other functionalities of the watch like GPS and maps. The final point the panel discusses about the new apple watch is that through Apple Watch Studios you can choose your case and band. The panel talks briefly about the iPad announcements, which they deemed the least interesting announcement. Apple is adding a smart connector to the low-end iPads and increasing the size of the screen. The panel considers how these changes along with pencil support make it a great deal. The main show at the event was the iPhone 11 presentation. The panel expresses how impressed they were with the way the iPhone 11 was presented. Along with performance improvements and a second camera, the iPhone 11 comes in a lot more colors than previous phones. Andrew is especially excited about the green phone and hopes to pick up a green iPhone 11 Pro. The panel considers the look of the phone. Evan expresses his disappointment with the square bump on the back where the cameras are mounted. They consider how cameras work and why the bump is necessary. They move onto the quality of the cameras. Andrew explains that while he is a camera and photography hobbyist, most of the pictures he takes with his phone are personal, family photos. Evan is not much of a photographer but loves having a high-quality camera on his phone. He especially appreciated it on his recent trip to Portugal. The quality of the camera makes a difference, the example they use for this point is by comparing a picture taken with an iPhone and one taken by a $50 android phone. There is no contest. However, Google cameras have gained a reputation for quality, the panel explains why this is a good thing. A little competition will help apple stay motivated in advancing its camera quality. Panelists Andrew Madsen Evan Stone Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan Adventures in DevOps Elixir Mix CacheFly Links September Event 2019 — Apple Apple Arcade See Trailer List of AppleTV+ shows Apple Watch Studio The Green iPhone 11 Light L16 https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Andrew Madsen: https://www.wanikani.com Evan Stone: Advanced iOS Summer Bundle - 2019
Episode 272: iPS 271: The Compass to iOS Developement with Brian Voong
Episode Summary In this episode of The iPhreaks Show, the panel interview Brian Voong. Brian runs a YouTube channel where he teaches about iOS development. The episode of his channel that the panel discusses with him is about the Roadmap to iOS development. Brian starts by giving a brief overview of what his video contains and how it is given with the intent to help developers find jobs in the iOS industry. The YouTube video has over 40,000 views and the panel wonders who are all these people watching this video. Brian explains that YouTube is a major resource for many people learning about development. Also this video appeals not only to beginners but also mid-level and senior developers who want to know what to learn next. The video features a diagram that depicts the roadmap an iOS developer should follow, so people are interested to see where they stand. The panel dives into nitpicks of the roadmap. The panel disagrees that Swift is considered functional programming only. Functional programming on the map is at the top but the panel debates whether or not it should be further down on the map. The panel considers functional programmings place now that functional programming is becoming more prominent in the iOS world, especially with the Combine framework coming out. The panel points out that Swiftjective C is missing and wonders if it should have been included. Once you have mastered the basics the panel wonders at what is the most important thing to learn. Brian explains to those who can see the diagram that there are close to 50 subjects listed for developers to learn. He chooses a few he thinks are the most important subjects to learn if a developer is hoping to get hired soon. He lists: learning how to work with a database, create crud screens, interact with restful API’s and do some effective network programming. Brain describes these as items to get your feet wet. The panel explains that you don’t need to know all of the items on the roadmap in order to get a job. It is more important to have all the basics and good problem-solving skills. Brian does mention some of the skills at the bottom of the roadmap that might be good to learn, such as Build Config, Jenkins and knowing how to deploy an app. Looking at the map, the panel wonders at the best way to read it. Initially, they assumed top to bottom would be best and in order of priority. Seeing deployment at the bottom, the panel describes the roadmap as more of a life cycle because they consider deployment a skill every beginner should have. The panel gives advice to new developers. It might seem that you need to learn all this stuff and then start coding but the panel explains that the best way to learn is through coding, running into problems and learning these skills to solve them. The panel compares it to learning a spoken language, in the beginning, it is about making yourself understood and as you speak it your grasp of the language will grow. They suggest letting the subjects find you when you need them instead of seeking them out. Brian explains why he recommends learning Jenkins near the beginning. He explains that so many junior developers have the exact same skill set and by knowing something like Jenkins you can set yourself apart from the rest. The panel shares why it may be important to know some CI stuff and be able to do a few things with it. The last topic they discuss in this episode is what tips and tools a developer should learn listed under the tips and tools heading on the roadmap. Brian suggests Break Point and Instrument. The panel explains what Instrument is most useful for, finding excessive memory usage and performance problems. Panelists Andrew Madsen Jaim Zuber Evan Stone Guest Brian Voong Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT My Ruby Story CacheFly Links iOS Roadmap to Professional Developer: Skills you MUST have! Roadmap to iOS Development https://www.letsbuildthatapp.com/course/youtube https://www.letsbuildthatapp.com/ https://twitter.com/buildthatapp https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Andrew Madsen: http://www.waxtraxrecords.com http://www.waxtraxonline.com Jaim Zuber: https://cocaineandrhinestones.com/ Evan Stone: https://iosdevjobs.com/ Brian Voong: https://github.com/Dimillian/MovieSwiftUI
Episode 271: iPS 270: Siri in iOS 12 with Gui
Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT My Ruby Story CacheFly Panel Gui Rambo Erica Sadun Jaim Zuber Andrew Madsen Summary Back by popular download, iPhreaks episode 252! In this episode, the iPheaks panelist speaks with, their very own, Gui Rambo. Gui shares information about the new features with Siri in iOS 12. Gui talks about the extended integration of Siri with other apps in iOS. The panel continues to discuss the further contextual suggestions of Siri, as well as the customizable features and extensions with Siri. Lastly, Gui talks about a new app, the Shortcuts App, that may make an appearance in iOS 12. This is a great episode to learn more about the upcoming new feature for iOS devices. Links iPS 252: Siri in iOS 12 with Gui https://github.com/insidegui/Milkshakr https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Gui Rambo: Sharecuts.app Erica Sadun: Original iPhone Battery Life Jaim Zuber: Bear Cam Andrew Madsen: https://www.fifty-licks.com/
Episode 270: iPS 269: Ray Tracing with Petrie Michael
Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT My Ruby Story CacheFly Panel Jaim Zuber Abbey Jackson Joined by Special Guest: Petrie Michael Summary Joining iPhreaks is our new panelist Abbey Jackson, an iOS developer from Vancouver, Canada and our special guest Petrie Michael, an iOS developer from Australia currently working in Japan. Petrie has joined the podcast today to discuss his recent talk at TrySwift about Ray tracing. After defining ray tracing and explaining how it works, Petrie walks the panel through his demonstration for his talk. The panel discusses the technology he uses and how a bigger project becomes much more complex using a Mercedes rendering he did. Petrie introduces binary space partitioning and how this speeds up the process. The panel asks Petrie for recommendations for beginners to graphics, how to get started and what language to use. Petrie shares his opinions on the state of the industry. The first being that modern programmers try to solve problems that don’t exist. The second being that programmers are neglecting to focus on things that encourage productivity. The panel discusses examples of these and how we can improve. Links Ray Tracing in One Weekend Graphics like Pixar using Swift https://github.com/kapsy/swift_ray_tracer Binary space partitioning https://www.blender.org/ iPS 258: Learning Objective-C as a Swift Developer with Abbey Jackson https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Abbey Jackson: https://twitter.com/aumi_app Aumi Petrie Michael: The Thirty Million Line Problem
Episode 269: iPS 268: Use Compositional Layout back to iOS11 With This One Simple Trick with Katsumi Kishikawa
Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan React Native Radio DevEd Podcast CacheFly Panel Jaim Zuber Michael Holt Evan Stone Joined by Special Guest: Katsumi Kishikawa Summary Katsumi Kishikawa, a talented open source library creator from Japan joins the panel which now includes our newest panelist, Evan Stone, an iOS developer and consultant since 2011 based in San Francisco. Katsumi shares with the panel how he got started and why he created a library that lets you use compositional layout back to iOS11. The panel considers the cool features that can be used with this tool and Katsumi shares some new features he is hoping to implement before the iOS13 release. Katsumi explains how the code tricks the compiler to make possible to backport to older versions of iOS. The challenges in backporting to iOS12 and 11, including orthogonal scrolling is discussed. Katsumi shares a bit about an application he built called Swift-ast-explorer. Impressed with all Katsumi’s work, the panel wonders how he gets all this done and they thank him for sharing his work. Links Using Collection View Compositional Layouts and Diffable Data Sources https://github.com/kishikawakatsumi/IBPCollectionViewCompositionalLayout http://iosdevbreak.com/ https://github.com/kishikawakatsumi/IBPCollectionViewCompositionalLayout https://swift-ast-explorer.kishikawakatsumi.com/ https://devchat.tv/iphreaks/160-ips-iot-with-evan-stone/ https://twitter.com/k_katsumi https://kishikawakatsumi.com/ https://www.facebook.com/iphreaks/ https://twitter.com/iphreaks Picks Michael Holt: https://quickbirdstudios.com/blog/combine-vs-rxswift/ https://rderik.com/blog/using-swift-for-scripting/ Evan Stone: Revolution in The Valley [Paperback]: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made