I’ve been working on this app which relates to my obsession with color. It’s an image processing app, and you can see some pictures made with it on our Tumblr. This involved learning about how to take images apart and put them back together, rewriting a lot of stuff in C for performance, etc. But […]
Design is a skill you can learn, the same way development is a skill you can learn. Design is not about making it look pretty, small percentage of it. About working out hierarchy, working out what is important. Brainstorm what the user should be able to do. Not “have analytics” Instead “watch a video” Order […]
Continuing my obsessive testing strategy, I had to set up KIF for UI Automation Tests. Honestly it’s surprising I didn’t do it earlier, but since the UI is very simple I was getting better ROI doing unit tests – I see KIF as a sanity check, not as a way to debug anything. Step 1: […]
App store offered a way for people who were interested in writing software to make money from writing software. Have recently found need to do more advertising. Even more recently, take on more and more contract work. Identify as devs, but need to learn more sides of running a business. Pareto principle is thing that […]
Recently I had cause to play with Adobe Air, which I missed when it was popular and it’s been pretty hard to find out what is actually going on with it as much of the information is out of date, other than Adobe’s corporate PR engine. It’s supposed to make it really easy to create […]
Helpful to take a step back and see where we are. We all tend to view the world through rose tinted glasses. Depend to look through a lens that colours what we are seeing. Unless take them off, hard to see what the situation is. Glasses worn by iOS is “we are indie devs”. Sense […]
Maybe it’s my functional programming background, but I love static methods. Not everyone gets this, some people parrot the phrase “static methods are bad for testing” but don’t seem to understand what that means. Static methods are great for testing. Inputs in, outputs out, side effects – what side effects? What’s not to love? What they […]
I was handling a common occurrence when doing something that takes a noticeable amount of time on iOS. Show loading UI. Do work. Transition to post-work UI. To make the experience better (so that it doesn’t lock up), I pushed 2 onto the background thread, and then had to push 3 back on to the […]
I’m working on an app right now. I’ve been working on it since I escaped my gilded cage, modulo distractions – consulting, travel, talks, writing. It’s fun, working on my idea, and thankfully I met a great designer so it’s not going to be Developer Art. And it’s cool. I’ve had a working demo for a while […]
My notes from John Reid‘s talk at iOSDevUK. Barriers to TDD. Two primary: Not knowing what it is. Rejecting it as silly without giving it a try. A good try, as there is a learning curve. It will slow you down at first. If you give up before the payoff then you will say “oh […]