I participated in NaNoWriMo once before, in 2016 – having watched my partner get more deeply involved in previous years. I haven’t really been back, but this year with all the … yeah, I decided to give it a shot again. I’ve got my profile set up, at least the basics, and now I’m stumblingContinue reading “NaNoWriMo Beat Sheet Scrivener Template”
Author Archives: heckj
Open apps with SwiftUI
Earlier this week, James Dempsey asked on twitter about who else was actively trying to build macOS apps using SwiftUI. I’m super interested in SwiftUI. A year ago, it spawned my own side-project into writing my own reference docs on Combine. Originally I had a vision of writing about Combine as well as SwiftUI. CombineContinue reading “Open apps with SwiftUI”
Learning to Write, Writing to Learn
Writing, while I love it, doesn’t come naturally to me. I suspect it doesn’t come naturally to any writer. The process of getting something written, really tightly focused and right on target, is a heroic act of understanding, simplification and embracing constraints. It’s a skill for which I don’t have a good analogue in theContinue reading “Learning to Write, Writing to Learn”
Feeling alone and outside of your comfort zone
Month five of the COVID lockdown, and when it started I picked up a new bit of work. It is something I’d wanted to do and from which I get enjoyment: technical writing. I am definitely stepping outside of my comfort zone. Although I’ve written extensively and am a published author with several titles, theContinue reading “Feeling alone and outside of your comfort zone”
post-WWDC – more device collaboration?
It’s been two weeks since WWDC as I’m writing this. I certainly haven’t caught all the content from this year’s event, or even fully processed what I have learned. I see several patterns evolving, hear and read the various rumors, and can’t help but wonder. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, or I’m reading tea leaves incorrectly,Continue reading “post-WWDC – more device collaboration?”
Exploring MultipeerConnectivity
A few weeks ago, I got curious about the MultipeerConnectivity framework available across Apple’s platforms. It’s a neat framework, and there are community-based libraries that layer over it to make it easier to use for some use cases: MultipeerKit (src) being the one that stood out to me. The promise of what this framework doesContinue reading “Exploring MultipeerConnectivity”
Continuous Integration with Github Actions for macOS and iOS projects
GitHub Actions released in August 2019 – I’ve been trying them out for nearly a full year, using beta access available the adventurous before it was generally available. It was a long time in coming, and I saw this feature as GitHub’s missing piece. Some great companies stepped into that early gap and provide excellentContinue reading “Continuous Integration with Github Actions for macOS and iOS projects”
How to make a SwiftUI component that draws a Shape with light
While I was experimenting with SwiftUI, one of the effects I wanted to re-create was taking a shape and making “stroke effects” on it. The goal was to create a SwiftUI component that could take an arbitrary path, apply this effect to the shape, and render it within the context of a larger SwiftUI view.Continue reading “How to make a SwiftUI component that draws a Shape with light”
Introducing and explaining the PreviewBackground package
While learning and experimenting with SwiftUI, I use the canvas assistant editor to preview SwiftUI views extensively. It is an amazing feature of Xcode 11 and I love it. There is a quirk that gets difficult for me though – the default behavior of the preview provider uses a gray background. I frequently use multipleContinue reading “Introducing and explaining the PreviewBackground package”
Four strategies to use while developing SwiftUI components
Lets start out with the (possibly) obvious: when I code, I frequently make mistakes (and fix them); but while I am going through that process function builders are frequently kicking my butt. When you are are creating SwiftUI views, you use function builders intensely – and the compiler is often at a loss to explainContinue reading “Four strategies to use while developing SwiftUI components”
