easeout

Nice work :) Your on-page hierarchical navigation looks like something you could do with existing navigation view transitions, disclosure groups, or an outline view, though the sticky header solution is cool. What UI patterns did you consider and how did you settle on this one?

While iOS is an umbrella term, the App Store is pretty clear about which devices an app supports. The device range is explained right beneath the screenshots, and the Compatibility section goes into more detail. In this case iPad isn't mentioned, so are you looking for some clear "no iPad" signal? If it will run on iPad, just not as a full-frame iPad app—because a few really won't run at all, like if they require a hardware capability only a phone has—how could they make that clear? In the storefront signal-to-noise game, is it worth the attention?

It does except in recent marketing. iOS is still used as an umbrella term.

It's still one iOS SDK. As a developer and power user audience, we remember when iPhone OS was first renamed to iOS on iPad's release because they were the same. It hasn't been renamed back. Regarding usage, the term iOS development within Apple dev shops still refers to both iPhone and iPad code and App Store distribution. We generally use iOS as an umbrella term, and reach for the new term iPadOS in reference to the iPad-exclusive parts of the user experience like its multitasking capabilities and Universal Control.

~20 year Dvorak user here. Comfort remains the chief benefit. I'm maybe faster than I was on QWERTY but not significantly.

I'm also a ~15 year Vim user, and I'm happy using its keys where Dvorak puts them even if the HJKL arrows are a little jumbled. To my muscle memory it's a solved problem.

If you're going to learn an alternative keyboard layout and also a modal editor like vim, kak, hx, etc. I suggest you find your keyboard layout happy place first and pursue editors second.

I mean, it already does say what I quoted. Would you change it?

You do get used to the syntax, at which point returning to languages that are prefix here, infix there, statements one way, expressions another, can wrinkle your nose a bit. But syntactic patterns are a question of emphasis; they establish a grain to go with. Lisp's syntax is so uniform as to have no grain. That puts more responsibility on you in exchange for high level flexibility—you can do things the way you want, and a creative method won't be against the grain like it might be in another language.

As for the recursion part, that's more true of Scheme, and it serves SICP's purpose of explaining that iterative and recursive processes can each be generated by recursive code. Common Lisp and friends do have iterative options for loops. But you will probably work in aggregate list operators more than touching a loop yourself.

These are great :) I'd like to do without file extensions again, but internet URL norms have now made that decision for all operating systems. But I'm still kicking Finder windows back into spatial mode three times a day.

My hunch is SEO combined with placing less responsibility on the programmer.

The new docs have a page per code symbol, and much more focused single-page topic articles, rather than 20-page programming guides. Docs seem to be structured to answer a question right when you have a problem, but then they don't offer a good way to study in depth before you begin.

The other day a younger teammate asked a group about some API documentation that said the results are undefined if you call this wrong, and had we ever heard of such a thing. And yes, of course, using framework code in unintended ways is always a garbage in, garbage out affair. This made me realize we have come a very long way in eradicating boilerplate and ceremony in code.

There used to be so many things you just had to use the way the docs explained, or else. Doing the boilerplate correctly was a primary focus of code review. Today we have ARC, we don't call alloc separately from init, we never handle KVO without the compiler's help, and we have no IBOutlets to forget to bind. To begin writing for iPhone 15 years ago, I had to study for a week or so with the programming guides, one for the language and another for the platform. Today you can do a one hour tutorial.

So, if you can stumble your way through building an app by typing the period key and seeing what methods are available, and the whole platform SDK exhibits Clarity at the Point of Use, would a newcomer even use the programming guides if they weren't down in the archive?

Thanks for the note; I may tweak that. Does the Highlights section's intro, "These chronologically-ordered highlights…" help?

—gist author

I'd say, use a toolchain that gives you rapid iteration to the point that you try to keep up with it, rather than the other way around. For instance a hot reloading workflow has been common for web apps for some years, but in native mobile we've only recently gained the capability via the preview canvas for SwiftUI. That makes a huge difference even though Swift is a big step down in compile speed from its predecessor.

I built a tool for measuring iOS app animation performance that makes dropped frames audible as clicks.

https://github.com/kconner/KMCGeigerCounter

OK but what if you don't know their car is starboard-side drive?

I'm not sure why this is a disliked post? Wouldn't mind a clue. I'm referring to the way they usually announce products right before they go up for sale, or announce software changes right before beta.

Apple has a long record of making decisions for users without presenting options about them. Having these problems solved for us rather than being bothered with them is part of what we've paid for all these years. But their audience is broader now, they're much more successful, and when this practice rubs people the wrong way we all hear about it in the press as if it's some Antennagate-level flaw or scandal with which they were "caught." So they put in an option to make the phone worse but the user happier and move on. I would say "but the reputation damage is done" if it wasn't a foregone conclusion to so many that Apple must be up to no good.

Environmental impact is one of the few kinds of news they announce while it's still a plan and not yet an accomplishment.

It specifically says an Android app is on the roadmap.

Reading this I'm drawn to the idea that, if LLMs are so attractive to us as a productivity boost, and if they do that by synthesizing gobs of similar human output, then we have been asking humans too much for the same output as one another and we're still doing it. Finally, a tool: I no longer have to be the automaton. That's a blessing and an indictment.

I don't know if I'll feel the same way tomorrow; just thought it was a perspective worth sharing.

All those behaviors are more simply explained by looking at the original designed behavior: Generate the most likely next word based on the human-sourced language in the training set. There's no understanding in there, no intention, no perception. It sounds like a human because humans said those things before. This is more like a search engine that synthesizes content instead of just locating a page.

To say it has "instinct" of its own is merely begging the question. No, it has echoes of ours.

NetNewsWire is keeping the dream alive. Its remake is one of my very favorite apps. https://netnewswire.com

Best advice I received on my way to college: Don't take any 8:00 AM classes. You won't go.

On iOS the Documents and Library folders exist per application in a sandbox, so those can be deleted with the app binary. Preferences like location permissions are reset too. But some things persist, like the app's related keychain data, which might contain a user session. Apps have the choice of where they store things and therefore what behavior to give users in a delete and reinstall scenario.

Of course any files saved in iCloud Drive or "On my iPhone" stay put, which users would expect.

I think the value of retaining the keychain is related to 1. automatically deleting least recently used apps and restoring them when a user goes to launch them, and 2. restoring from encrypted backups, in which the downloaded apps are not backed up themselves, slowly install after the restore completes, and find the keychain data waiting for them.

If I recall, not all methods of backup include the keychain, which I think was the difference between having to sign into every app again or just a few due to a new device's Secure Enclave. These days if you get a new device you'll have a much better time with the phone-to-phone migration assistant then a backup and restore.

I feel like what you're describing is just marketing, in the sense of exaggerating the necessity of a product that works but which you really can do without. Or do you mean Gibson's products don't really work?

I've only experienced it as described in the article, with a person as the limerent object. The limerent state is sustained by uncertainty, the small and tantalizing chance it could work out the way you want and the undeniable chance it could fail. One way out of the situation is to make success impossible (say, by a breakup) and therefore reach certainty of the outcome. This is of course the last thing most people would do, but to end what feels like permanent madness, you take that deal.

I think if this article really described you, you would stop dead in your tracks reading it. There is what the general public casually calls OCD and intrusive thoughts, and then there are many horrifying flavors of the real deal.

I'm sensing that engineering compromises are what you'd call work, not fun? You may be asking for elegant cross platform tooling that may not exist because of the compromises it would require to hit a common denominator. I would pick my favorite platform and make something uncompromising using its strengths.

Here it is. To me it's like a demon you can beat by knowing its name. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

(CW OCD) Twice in my life I've become helplessly obsessed with a given topic to the point that nearly everything I saw, heard, or thought about would build a new association back to the topic, forming a feedback loop. The first time it lasted a year. No one could tell because I was just acting like a weird teenager to them, but it was hugely debilitating. I couldn't get off the ride. The second time, maybe fifteen years later, I had since researched the condition. I recognized it was recurring with a new topic and managed to stop it over several straight days of deliberate, flashy distraction. By that time I had sought and found professional help, from which I learned quite a lot more. As far as my coworkers knew, I just took a few sick days. They didn't know I was struggling for sanity. I've been in good mental health for many years now, and I'm prepared.

There are things no one can do for us and we must face ourselves. Only you can take a first step to seek help, or step back onto a known healthy path. Thanks for starting this conversation.

> To me, it seems more like casting magic spells. Younger engineers using those libraries—almost always without understanding how they work—are just casting spells without any understanding of the magic behind them.

Isn't casting spells one of the key metaphors of SICP, the wizard book? Concepts as objects, spirits controlled by their names, and abstraction barriers preventing a consumer from needing to know implementation details?

Not sure it counts as a lecture but damn that's a great podcast

In my experience, when you always have the option of coasting, repeatedly choosing to coast is tempting. You know it leads to a worse outcome. You live in fear of long term regret from the sum of your choices. Suffering arrives in between activities, when you face all this. It's no wonder we like to be distracted.