Web Excursions 2021-11-20
As it is with any other app, think of 2Do made up of two distinct parts: the UI (front-end) and the Core Logic / Model / Sync Engine / Plugins / Database (back-end).
2Do is a native app –
which means I wrote the iOS, macOS and the Android apps purely for the aforementioned platforms
using their designated Software Development Kits (SDKs) in their respective languages (Obj-C / Java) –
all in their own time.
There’s some shared code between the iOS and macOS (just some) but none that’s shared with Android.
For as long as I remember, I have spent 16 to 20 hours straight, every single day – for months in a stretch – on features, improvements, fixes and more.
In my personal opinion, all of the cross-platform solutions out there leave a terrible first-impression.
They consume more RAM, are power hungry in some cases and generally slow.
The UI feels like a boxed up website, the faux native controls look fake and control.
React-Native is a good contender, however it falls short when you need to customize certain controls for a specific look / feel / usability.
2Do does a lot of that.
I refuse to write a non-native cross-platform app that would resemble a google search result in both look and feel.
Maybe I’m being irrational, but nothing compares to going full-native.
SwiftUI gains new functionality every year with a new release of iOS / macOS
but this functionality is not available on older versions of the operating system.
It would soon become impractical to propose or expect users to upgrade to the latest macOS version on day one,
only so they can install 2Do’s new update that now requires the latest version of SwiftUI.
Mac Catalyst is also not an option
given it’s generally lacking when it comes to customizations and overall painful to deal with
(from what I witnessed in a brief attempt),
especially if you rely on certain frameworks that aren’t Mac Catalyst ready yet.
The only option to keep things the way they are.
I will continue to design, develop and refine each app for the platform it’s targeted for,
using the current set of native frameworks offered for iOS / macOS (UIKit / AppKit).
I’ve come to value the the current policy 2Do has upheld, only after experiencing doing the same for BusyCal, and that is to remain entirely cloud agnostic.
Sync – especially when it comes to the number of services it would eventually support – has been one of the most challenging aspects of working on the new update.
I’m actually done re-writing the entire back-end / core-logic / sync engine / automatic undo registration and a lot more, all in entirely in Swift.
My (new) plan is to take a step back.
I’ve decided the new update would in fact only ship with an internal re-write of everything discussed,
but with a UI that feels mostly similar (although re-written in large parts).
Will I finally charge for this update? I really don’t know. I also don’t care about that right now. We’ll see when the time comes.
The Grammarphobia Blog: A Prohibitive Favorite
Q: A few weeks before this month’s mayoral election, Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee, was described as “the prohibitive favorite.”
I can’t imagine what “prohibitive” means here.
A: Although “prohibitive” usually refers to something that prohibits or that costs too much, the adjective has a third sense in American English, where it’s also used to describe an overwhelming favorite in politics, sports, business, and so on.
As far as we can tell, the overwhelming sense began appearing in American sportswriting in the late 19th century.
The earliest examples we’ve found are from newspaper reports on horse races
The usage increased sharply in the second half of the 20th century, though it seems to have fallen off a bit in recent years
Ask HN: What Is the “HN” of “Web3”, Crypto, DeFi, NFT, Etc | Hacker News
PragmaticPulp:
Twitter seems to be the go-to place for these discussions.
Partly because many of the web3 participants are actively trying to build communities around themselves that they can leverage in their crypto activities.
There isn’t much interest in anonymous discussions.
Frankly, there’s not really any interest in honest discussions because the participants have all realized that telling people exactly what they want to hear and hinting that they can get rich is a golden way to collect a lot of Twitter followers right now.
Many of the big personalities are launching expensive crypto courses or NFTs and they need a lot of true believer followers to sell to.
The challenge with web3 is that almost nobody is actually using web3 for anything other than doing more web3 speculation. That makes this virtually impossible to find this:
I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion. Even the people discussing the potential practical applications aren’t the people who are using it. The people talking about it are the people trying to sell it or speculate on it.
newacc9:
The answer to every question like this is twitter and podcasts.
Just code some smart contracts on the testnet after you've absorbed the basics. replyAsk HN: What Is the “HN” of “Web3”, Crypto, DeFi, NFT, Etc | Hacker News
PragmaticPulp:
Twitter seems to be the go-to place for these discussions.
Partly because many of the web3 participants are actively trying to build communities around themselves that they can leverage in their crypto activities.
There isn’t much interest in anonymous discussions.
Frankly, there’s not really any interest in honest discussions because the participants have all realized that telling people exactly what they want to hear and hinting that they can get rich is a golden way to collect a lot of Twitter followers right now.
Many of the big personalities are launching expensive crypto courses or NFTs and they need a lot of true believer followers to sell to.
The challenge with web3 is that almost nobody is actually using web3 for anything other than doing more web3 speculation. That makes this virtually impossible to find this:
I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion. Even the people discussing the potential practical applications aren’t the people who are using it. The people talking about it are the people trying to sell it or speculate on it.
newacc9:
The answer to every question like this is twitter and podcasts.
Just code some smart contracts on the testnet after you've absorbed the basics.