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.

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.

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!
• How do we do todos?
  • Steve: Omnifocus, Todo, Calendar
  • Aaron: Calendar
  • Kotaro: Reminders, 3-4 core things to do that day in notes app
• Theory Discussion
  • Pickle Jar Theory
  • Kotaro’s Theory
• Broad App Goals
  • What would make this app useful for us?
  • Kotaro
    • Lightweight
    • Pattern reporting (task completion)
    • iOS version for quick task check-off
    • Recurring tasks you want to do every day
    • CloudKit/Core Data sync
    • iPad app?
    • One-offs
    • Siri Intent
  • Steve
    • Habit tracker
    • Historical trends
  • Aaron
    • Fitness training goals
      • e.g. Training Peaks app
    • Goal tracking
• Feature Summary Discussion
  • Record when you did the task or assume you did it at the time of checking off?
  • Epics vs Tasks
  • Notifications are not annoying (summary info, for example)
  • Widgets
  • Default view is stuff we already did.
  • Bucket List app, checking off towards a goal and get summaries
• Timeline for MVP
  • Release before WWDC: 1.5 month project
  • Aaron’s Scope Suggestion: Help us prioritize WWDC work
• How do we break this up?
  • We already created an app, Trello, GitHub repo, icon
  • 4 sprints of 2 weeks
    • Strong prototype by 4th sprint at least
    • Test Flight
  • First Sprint:
    • Basic Todo Task UI
    • Basic Core Data data model
    • CloudKit sync
    • Mac to iOS syncing
• Not a Sponsor: FinTimer.com
• Kotaro’s New Outro!

Intro music: “When I Hit the Floor”, © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

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.

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?” This was a fun one.

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. Arpit is always a pleasure to converse with and we delve into several interesting aspects of the app’s creation, design, and technologies as well as how Arpit is experimenting with the Virtual Meetup format of Philly’s Google Developer Group using tools like Twitter Spaces. It’s a fascinating and entertaining conversation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

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!

Topics Discussed:

• RealityOS is Real!
• How ARKit People Occlusion Works
• What makes a good AR experience, according to Apple
• AR Goggles Pricing and Design
• A Tangent on XML, JSON, gRPC, and Web APIs
• Ray casting and ray tracing
• Not a Sponsor: GroceryTimer.app

Intro music: “When I Hit the Floor”, © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.

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.

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. It’s a diamond in the rough kind of episode, but sometimes that’s how it goes when you are trying to start down an unexplored path.

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. Finally, we spend time talking about some specific app ideas and end the episode with some bonus talk about recognizing hand gestures. Next time, we will decide what app we will build for season 2!