Side Project Spotlight Podcast

This week, we return to our Todo App project. Coding has stalled because we didn’t have a specific enough idea of exactly WHAT the app is supposed to be all about. Problem definition is hard and this week Steve presents his thoughts on how to move forward based on his research into some existing digital and paper habit tracking systems. Then we sketch some specific app feature requirements where we coalesce around the idea of tracking something akin to “epics,” provide positive reinforcement via widgets, and support Siri Intents for use in the Shortcuts app. [More Info]

The app is making slow progress and we will have more to say about that soon, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk with our special guest this week, Mohammad Faani. Mohammad is an active member of PhillyCocoa and joins us to discuss his journey to becoming an iOS developer as well as how both Stack Overflow and his new TIL blog help him focus and shape his own developer journey. [More Info]

This week we finally reveal our idea for our second app on this podcast and it’s a macOS todo app! I know, very original! Listen in to our unscripted discussion as we talk about why we chose this concept for the app, some theories around todo systems, and eventually coalesce around some broad goals for features as well as a timeline for a Test Flight prototype. Topics Discussed: Introducing our next side project: a macOS Todo app! [More Info]

After we recorded this week’s podcast, we did decide on our next side project and it’s not what you might expect. It has to do with pickles. Stay tuned for info about that next time! This week, we delve into the side project “failure” bin to talk about overcoming the many challenges to completing side projects and how even when we move on from one, it was still worth doing. [More Info]

We have another special guest this week! Sean Najera, Senior Mobile Developer at Nuuly, joins the Pod to talk about his experiences using Flutter before discussing his new SwifUI Navigator library that fixes a big missing feature in Apple’s framework. There is also some love for C#, a look at the waves of Android development over the years, the evolution of languages like Dart and Swift, and new this week, a special post-show where Steve asks the question that only Aaron can answer, “What is a table? [More Info]

With all of us getting busy with work, we are using this opportunity to experiment with the podcast format and bring a spotlight to other developers in the community. Our first guest to the POD is Arpit Mathur, creator of GroceryTimer.app. This app was our Not a Sponsor last time and since it was recently released, we thought it would be fun to discuss the how’s and why’s of its creation. [More Info]

Ok, we are really spinning our wheels now getting a new app idea pinned down, but the upshot is there are a lot of interesting subjects touched upon this week, including the “confirmation” of RealityOS, how people occlusion works in ARKit, a tangent about the history of Web API technologies, and much more. Plus, our Not a Sponsor this week could help you keep your food from spoiling! [More Info]

Continuing our incremental progress exploring the AR app space, this week, Aaron shows off our first baby steps with a working prototype! Steve discusses his month long side project making movies, which prompts a discussion of how AR could be used in filmmaking. Then, Kotaro and Steve go on a tangent exploring nightmare AR/VR dystopia possibilities before getting back on track with this week’s “Not a Sponsor” segment. Finally, the trio settles on a handful of feature paths to explore for next time. [More Info]

We decided that we want to work on an AR app, but we still can’t figure out what to build. The space is still very new, hardware from Apple doesn’t exist yet, and life really got in our way last sprint, so we didn’t get much prototype exploration done. This week, we continue our search for an AR app idea, perhaps come up with a germ of an idea by the end, and in the middle, Kotaro expounds on game jams and creative cheats from his own past. [More Info]

After a brief retrospective about our last app, Kanji Love, and a shout out to the recently departed Release Notes podcast, the team starts a discussion about our next project, which looks like it’ll be focused on Augmented Reality. First, we ask ourselves, what is the relationship between AR, VR, and the “Metaverse” concept? Then we read the tea leaves of Apple’s APIs to make an educated guess about future hardware and types of applications that would be useful to build. [More Info]