This is fantastic! Great write up. A question: any idea what sort of accuracy you’re getting at the end of the process with respect to things like carriageway widths? As you allude to in the article, this could be a great tool for advocacy groups to identify where a road is wide enough to accommodate cycle lanes, or where footpath widths are substandard. I was just wondering if it’s possible to get the +/- 10cm accuracy that’d be ideal for doing this sort of work. Thanks!
I’m an iOS dev, but I have developed some macOS apps for internal use using AppKit: I’d like to think they were pretty good apps if not quite production ready. I think the Big Nerd Ranch Cocoa Programming Guide for OSX is still the best book out there. The version I have is from 2015 which targets Swift 1.2 and Yosemite: you might actually be better off with an earlier version that targets Objective-C as Swift has changed quite a lot since then. If you go through the Big Nerd Ranch book you’ll have enough to use the start using the official documentation effectively.
AppKit is very old for sure, and has a lot of weird corners, but you can be incredibly productive with it: and there is still a lot more Interface Builder “magic” developing for macOS than there is with iOS. Combined with the brilliance of the Foundation stdlib it can be a pleasure. My own experience is that if you avoid fighting AppKit you’ll have a very productive time.
I wouldn’t support some of the recommendations for SwiftUI and Catalyst. As other commenters have noted you’ll have to “drop down” to AppKit anyway to create a good app.
I just left. I was an iOS dev for years, and ran my own (failed) startup before that, but now I work in politics. My friend ran for parliament, I was his campaign manager. He won a seat in the election, and he asked me to leave my job to come and work as his parliamentary assistant, and I said yes.
Politics and software aren’t so different - they’re certainly both messy behind the scenes. I miss cranking out code and being in the zone, but like others I don’t miss the Taylorisation and faddishness of the sector.
I took a big pay cut with my new job, but I don’t regret it. I’m still on HN because after a day of reading about politics and policy it’s nice to read people arguing about different things!
I thought it offered some valid technical criticisms of React: specifically that it's over engineered and it results in a bad user experience, especially on mobile.
I thought the article offered an interesting argument that front end development has suffered from increasing over-engineering in the last decade, and this over-engineering can be explained by cultural factors and the influence of large corporations like Facebook.