The CoreBluetooth interface can be restrictive, but the BLE functionality that it exposes is so consistent. That “just works” on a whole other operating system is incredibly valuable. Then you have Android where something for one phone doesn’t behave the same way on another phone, and all the work you pour into it gets you no closer to a functioning desktop app.
Android Bluetooth is a constant nightmare for me as a basically solo open source developer. I really don't want to buy a bunch of phones to test, and remote hardware testing is $$$.
Heh, saw the title and instantly wondered if it was qdot as he recently [0] mentioned "yeah I wrote and manage our Bluetooth le library! It’s been one of the bigger regrets of my life", and this post is indeed linked there ;)
To look on the bright side, "maintainer of a Bluetooth LE library" sure looks better on your resume than "maintainer of a sex toy control library".
I've used these sorts of oddball points on my resume and it's consistently started good conversations in interviews and gotten me in with teams of people who I worked well with because we liked the same weird things.
Yup, exactly this. There's a certain level of confidence/stupidity required to put "maintainer of a sex toy control library" on your resume, and I'm interested in talking to people who are willing to take a risk on figuring out which one of those I am.
Getting two imperfectly compatible BLE libraries from different OSs to work together involves guesses, prayers, and lots of hand waving of devices in the air. It’s like trying to learn Hogwarts spell casting with a wizard textbook missing half of every page.
I spend a nontrivial portion of my life crying.
"Also, if I don’t make the library async, less people on Hacker News will be mad at me, and that’s a number that should always go up, not down." - [insert some witty comment about reward functions here, I just love this line and wanted to promote it]
Lol
But if it was sans-io, it could be both sync and async :P