Andrew Pontious And Wolf Rentzsch

Shows

Edge Cases Edge Cases 121: The Official Container Type of the Edge Cases PodcastWolf on subpixel text rendering and Andrew on linked lists. Links: Subpixel Anti-Aliasing Follow-Up « Quarter Life Crisis Subpixel rendering « Wikipedia Sub-pixel font smoothing with CGBitmapContext « Cocoabuilder How to work around poor text rendering in text backed by a CALayer « Stack Overflow twui/TUICGAdditions.m at master « GitHub Color-aware ClearType requires access to fixed background pixels, which is a problem if you don’t know what the background pixels are, or if they aren’t fixed « The Old New Thing Andrew Pontious tweet: “Guys guys I think I might actually have a legitimate use for a linked list guys.” Andr...

2015-02-0536 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 117: Something Was Not Going RightWolf on events vs threads and Andrew on our Overcast feed issues. Links: Accidental Tech Podcast: 97: You Have to Know When to Stop « atp.fm felixge/node-mysql, Streaming query rows « GitHub A New Streaming API for Node v0.10 « Node.js Blog the morning paper: an interesting/influential/important paper from the world of CS every weekday morning, as selected by Adrian Colyer Why threads are a bad idea « the morning paper Threads Are Interesting « Edge Cases Why events are a bad idea « the morning paper Conflict-free Replicated Data Types « Edge Cases On the duality of operating system structu...

2015-01-0131 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 100: Apps for iWatch and Apple TVAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the third-party apps that might be feasible on Apple’s unusual devices, the hypothetical iWatch and the Apple TV. Plus: the future of Edge Cases (hint: there is one). Links: Nick Lockwood tweet: “Until now we all agreed these were benefits of Cocoa: * C compatibility * Dynamic dispatch * Nil safety * Duck typing. Now they’re all bad?” Cargo-cult typing, or: Objective-C’s default type is id « metablog, by Marcel Weiher Remove features for greater power, aka: Swift and Objective-C initializers « metablog, by Marcel Weiher Episode 146: A Swift Bias « Core Intuition iPod nano (6th G...

2014-08-0944 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 99: Swift Is a Really Good Thing and a Step BackWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about the upsides (it will help advance the industry at large) and downsides (its disturbing lack of dynamism) of Swift. Links: Then, You’re Just Writing C++ « Edge Cases Ken Ferry tweet: “@timburks @andyarvanitis yeah… I do think “Objective-C without the C” is just… false. I don’t know why they said that. It’s C++++.” Joachim Bengtsson tweet: ““Swift is like as if C++ was toll-free bridged to ObjC” — @saurik succinctly summarizes this weird new language” Why Apple’s Swift Language Will Instantly Remake Computer Programming « Wired AppleScript’s Glorious Failure « Edge Cases Drew...

2014-07-3055 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 98: When the Bubble BurstsAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the current tech bubble: is it one? Is it web or mobile, or both? Is it like the 90s dot-com bubble? Plus: the tech industry in San Francisco, and Andrew’s tips for surviving a bust. Links: Dot-com bubble « Wikipedia Facebook’s $1 Billion Instagram Purchase: Was it Worth it? « TIME.com What’s Up With Facebook’s WhatsApp Deal? « InvestorPlace The Man Who Gave “Yo” $200,000 « Valleywag I Am Rich « Wikipedia Any Port in a Storm « [Time code]; Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating The World « WSJ Wired Cover: The Long Boom Tul...

2014-07-2445 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 97: The Dynamics and Politics of Code ReuseWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about the dynamics and politics of code reuse: from the complexities of the simple case to the control issues of relying on Apple’s code. Links: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, by Robert C. Martin « Amazon.com Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, by Robert L. Glass « Amazon.com Debug 39: Nitin Ganatra episode I: System 7 to Carbon « iMore Producing Open Source Software Google I/O 2008 - Open Source Projects and Poisonous People « YouTube The Tofu Scale « Edge Cases Semantic Version Branches for Submodules « rentzsch.tumblr.com Stewardship « NSHipster

2014-07-1745 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 96: “Refactoring Sucks!”Andrew Pontious talks to Wolf Rentzsch about refactoring, including Martin Fowler’s influential book, what ASTs are and aren’t, and Andrew’s time working on the refactoring feature in Xcode. Links: Xcode Release Notes: About Xcode 6 Beta 3 What’s New in Xcode 6 « Edge Cases apontious/BigFan « GitHub Law of large numbers « Wikipedia Refactoring (part of martinfowler.com) Code refactoring « Wikipedia Decomposition (computer science) « Wikipedia Catalog of Refactorings « Refactoring.com JetBrains AppCode: Switch into top gear of iOS development Caveat-Slash-Manifesto « The Powers of Observation JavaScript Plus Square Brackets « Edge Cases Putting Your Scent on the Code « Edge Cases Abst...

2014-07-121h 02

Edge Cases Edge Cases 95: Conflict-free Replicated Data TypesWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious Conflict-free Replicated Datatypes (CRDTs), an exciting new suite of simple data types that are explicitly designed for distributed data storage. Also: CAP theorem, eventual consistency, and Indiana Jones. Links: apontious/BigFan « GitHub CAP theorem « Wikipedia Project management triangle « Wikipedia CAP Twelve Years Later: How the “Rules” Have Changed « InfoQ Leslie Lamport « Wikipedia The Writings of Leslie Lamport « Microsoft Research Sequential Consistency « Edge Cases Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit « Enterprise Integration Patterns Your Coffee Shop Doesn’t Use Two-Phase Commit « IEEE Software Design (PDF) Jepsen « Aphyr Atomicity: Concurrent Data Access Without Blowing Up « Red...

2014-07-0553 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 94: What's New in Xcode 6Andrew Pontious takes advantage of Apple’s looser WWDC NDA to talk with Wolf Rentzsch about some of the new features in the prerelease version of Xcode 6. Links: No Carbon This Time Around « Edge Cases Framing Your Work « The Powers of Observation WWDC 2014 Session 205 Creating Extensions for iOS and OS X, Part 1 WWDC 2014 Session 217 Creating Extensions for iOS and OS X, Part 2 WWDC 2014 Session 416 Building Modern Frameworks WWDC 2014 Session 411 What’s New in Interface Builder Interface Builder Object and Media Help: Creating a Custom View that Renders in Interface Builder Elizabeth tweet: ““All these screen sizes can seem r...

2014-06-2148 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 93: The Culture Didn't Change FirstWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about technical culture: how various technologies are associated with beliefs and their priorities. Examples include Linux, Perl, Python, the Web, and of course Apple and Swift. Links: C4 (conference) This Is Water « Wikipedia There’s more than one way to do it « Wikipedia PEP 20 — The Zen of Python « Python Programming Language Legacy Website I’m done with the web « The Crazy One Fillers and Spillers « Edge Cases Instantiating Classes by Name in Swift « Michael Tsai Debug 11: Don Melton and Safari « iMore Rejected Episode Titles: You’re Playing the Long Game “Look at M...

2014-06-1448 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 92: Edge Cases LiveWolf Rentzsch and Andrew Pontious record before a live audience at AltLabs during WWDC. Topics: avoiding Sherlocking, seriousness/elegance vs. fun/extensibility at Apple, the “tidal wave” of third-party developers (Wolf) and Swift as a half-step (Andrew). Links: AltLabs « AltConf BusyCal Fantastical for Mac « Flexibits Downcast Instacast « Vemedio Overcast Deckset for Mac: Turn your notes into beautiful presentations Reveal App Alien Reference Counting « Edge Cases NuBus « Wikipedia Rejected Episode Titles: How Many People Got Sherlocked Yesterday? Avoid the 800 Pound Gorilla That Is Apple Dodged the Leather Bullet “You’re Such a Downer” The Magpie of OS and App D...

2014-06-0357 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 91: Our Broken Job Interview ProcessDuring Wolf’s continuing hiatus, second guest cohost Ashley Nelson-Hornstein talks with Andrew Pontious about how tech industry job interviews don’t work, and what can be done to fix them. Links: Ashley Nelson-Hornstein « Twitter Circa News – Save time, stay informed AltLabs — AltConf Texas hold ‘em « Twitter Testing Whether You Believe in Fairies « Edge Cases Rejected Episode Titles: Entirely Disenchanted with the Process Preaching to the Choir Kvetching About Stuff You’ve Changed Jobs How Many Times Now? This Process Is Awesome! A Ridiculous Luck-Based Dog and Pony Show Awkwardly Type into Your Web Browser Mobil...

2014-05-0836 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 90: Closed Captions and SubtitlesAs Wolf takes an extended hiatus, first guest cohost Justin Kaufman talks with Andrew Pontious about how you use text and audio to describe video, such as closed captions, subtitles, and descriptive audio. Also: many contributions by Andrew’s cat, sorry! Links: Justin Kaufman « Twitter Raizlabs NSCoder Night: Your time to code! Accessibility « Edge Cases Hyperdrive (TV series) « Wikipedia Solaris (1972 film) « Wikipedia Closed Captioning on Television « FCC.gov Closed captioning « Wikipedia Subtitle (captioning) « Wikipedia Television Decoder Circuitry Act « National Association of the Deaf 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act « National Association of the Deaf WWDC 2013 Session 608...

2014-04-2737 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 89: Multipeer Connectivity Is a Terrible NameWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about Apple’s new promising but troubled Multipeer Connectivity framework and his new app that takes advantage of it: Rumor Monger. Links: apontious/Create AssetCatalog JSON File.py « GitHub Gist edgecasesshow « Twitter Ole Moritz tweet: “@apontious Haven’t listened to the entire episode yet, but os.walk returns a generator (roughly equivalent to an NSEnumerator), not a list.” Matt Connolly tweet: “Ruby tuples (and file scanning). @apontious @edgecasesshow http://mattconnolly.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/ruby-tuples-and-file-scanning/” Tuples and NSError « Michael Tsai How an Under-Appreciated iOS 7 Feature Will Change the World « Cult of Mac iOS 7 Multipeer Conn...

2014-04-1941 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 88: Tuple for Your Thoughts?Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the simplest of things, the tuple: what it is, how it is used in other languages (specifically Python), and how, in an alternate universe, it could bring some sanity to Cocoa error handling. Links: Mark All as Read « Brent Simmons (inessential.com) Tuple « Wikipedia Andrew Pontious tweet: “Y’know, blocks aren’t a great substitute for tuples, but that are a substitute for tuples…sometimes.” os.walk « 16.1. os — Miscellaneous operating system interfaces — Python 3.4.0 documentation Python Programming/Tuples « Wikibooks If You Look at the Error, You Will Crash « Edge Cases An NSError Error «...

2014-04-1246 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 86: Andrew’s Blogroll in the Post-Blog EraAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the developer blogs he follows via RSS: the ones that have died/gone fallow/transformed, the ones he’s added recently, and the ones that seem to be trying to replicate Apple’s tutorials and documentation. Links: On a Roll « The Powers of Observation Rolling Back « The Powers of Observation My 2 Bucks on Pricing « ChrisAshworth.org via Wayback Machine David and Goliath « Notes from Figure 53 Paper « FiftyThree Touchy Talk Jekyll • Simple, blog-aware, static sites Feed Wrangler Google Reader « Wikipedia ★reeder Rolling Forward « The Powers of Observation Bastard Operator from Hell (mentions...

2014-03-2954 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 85: A Fan of Ravioli CodeWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about programming pasta: disorganized “spaghetti” code, multi-layered “lasagna” code, and conceptually-separated “ravioli” code (his favorite). Bonus: new GitHub project! Links: Spaghetti code « Wikipedia Libraries vs Collaborating Objects « Edge Cases Inside-Out Apps « Secure Mac Programming Colin Campbell tweet: “iOS architecture, where MVC stands for Massive View Controller” Single Responsibility Principle & iOS « The Bendyworks Blog Single responsibility principle « Wikipedia Shawna Scott tweet: “Duplication is far cheaper than wrong abstractions. We teach novices DRY without teaching them when to break that rule.” Writing Solid Code (Microsoft Programming Series), by Steve Maguire « Amazon.com Dependency Injection Demystifie...

2014-03-2346 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 84: A Couple of Maxims, a Couple of AphorismsAndrew Pontious talks to Wolf Rentzsch about the three maxims he gleaned from Evan Doll’s interview on the Debug podcast: code is a liability, ship the right bugs, and (paraphrased) don’t impose unneeded project methodologies. Links: Matt Connolly tweet: “The 6502 chip in the apple II had binary coded decimal add and subtract. @rentzsch @edgecasesshow” Andrew Pontious tweet: “ClickToFlash 1.5 Eddy, mentioned in Edge Cases 79: “ClickToFlash: Behind the Music”: http://edgecasesshow.com/79 pic.twitter.com/FJZSvH5CMO” fsn « Wikipedia Debug (podcast) « iMore Debug 26: Evan Doll on Apple and Flipboard « iMore Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “just wrote a two-line function. Bo...

2014-03-1550 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 83: Floating Point Numbers Are a Leaky AbstractionWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about floating point numbers: how they work, why they’re weird, and when you definitely shouldn’t use them (hint: mo money mo problems). Links: George E. P. Box « Wikipedia Floating point numbers are a leaky abstraction « The Endeavour It’s a Unix system « YouTube Five Tips for Floating Point Programming « CodeProject Float « ridiculous_fish Floating-point unit « Wikipedia A Cryptography Tourist « Edge Cases What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic « Oracle Documentation An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point « Professor William Kahan’s web pages Binary-coded decimal « Wikipedia Arbitrary-prec...

2014-03-0847 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 82: Asset CatalogsAndrew Pontious stumps Wolf Rentzsch not once, but repeatedly, by talking about asset catalogs, new in Xcode 5. But in turn he is stumped attempting to backport them to earlier OSes. Links: 1998 NBC It’s New to You Summer Promo « YouTube Resource Programming Guide: About Resources, iOS Supports Device-Specific Resources davepeck/iOS-artwork « GitHub bom(5) Mac OS X Manual Page rentzsch/jrswizzle « GitHub When a UIImageView’s image is set from Interface Builder, how is that image loaded? « Stack Overflow How does UIImage get constructed when created from an XIB? « Stack Overflow Property List Programming Guide: Introduction to Property Lists...

2014-03-0143 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 81: The Only Cool Thing About PDFWolf Rentzsch tries to keep up with Andrew “The Joneses” Pontious and introduces JRPDFLabel, his new…innovative project that allow you to use custom fonts in Interface Builder without having to bundle the entire font with your Mac app. Links: Compliment.app: automatically donate to the Mac apps you use everyday Flattry Will Get You Everywhere « Edge Cases rentzsch/JRPDFLabel « GitHub rentzsch/xib2pdflabels « GitHub PDF Kit Programming Guide: Introduction to PDF Kit Programming Guide « developer.apple.com Mac Software for Humans « Fortunate Bear Most Fortunate Bear Products Discontinued « Safe from the Losing Fight A Postmortem of Failed Produc...

2014-02-2335 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 80: Xcode TemplatesAndrew Pontious, with guest cohost Josh Johnson, talks about Xcode project and file templates. Links: Josh Johnson (jnjosh) « Twitter @jnjosh’s blog cocoaheads/raleigh « Github apontious/Chime « GitHub Creating Custom Xcode 4 File Templates « Bob McCune Internationalization Programming Topics: Localizing Pathnames Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “ran into the problem of trying to say __FILE__ & __LINE__ in last @edgecasesshow. Totally adopting http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200605/dunder.html … thanks @erik_price” AFNetworking/Xcode-Project-Templates « Github Libraries vs Collaborating Objects « Edge Cases Alcatraz: Xcode Package Manager Rejected Episode Titles: Pulling a Siracusa A Topic List a Mile Long I Hid Our Cats Befor...

2014-02-1540 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 79: ClickToFlash: Behind the MusicWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about how he unexpectedly came to lead the popular and award-winning Safari plugin ClickToFlash, and how, after a wild ride, the project both ended and continued on. Links: Graham Lee (secboffin) app.net post: “@apontious @rentzsch and now I’m on the clang episode. Clang-C creates its own thread that it does its indexing on, you get callbacks on that thread. See https://bitbucket.org/iamleeg/objectivebrowser” iamleeg/ObjectiveBrowser « Bitbucket Messing about with Clang « Secure Mac Programming Steven Frank tweet: “http://clicktoflash.googlecode.com/ Ahhh, finally!” ClickToFlash « Daring Fireball Flash Cookies « rentz...

2014-02-0838 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 78: Indexing with ClangAndrew Pontious describes to Wolf Rentzsch his efforts to use libclang to index his Xcode projects, using his new (and barely functional) Chime framework. Links: My Lists from 2010 « The Powers of Observation The Case Against Xcode Plugins « Edge Cases Friday Q&A 2014-01-24: Introduction to libclang « mikeash.com libclang: C Interface to Clang « clang macmade/ClangKit « GitHub Projects – ClangKit – Documentation « XS-Labs apontious/Chime « GitHub Translation unit (programming) « Wikipedia The Plumber’s Guide to Blocks « Edge Cases Name mangling « Wikipedia Rejected Episode Titles: I Had Not Broken Free of the Chain Clang’s a Big Topic You Co...

2014-02-0248 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 77: Prototype-Based ProgrammingWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about his other favorite thing, prototype-based programming, and examples of it such as Self, NewtonScript, Io, and, yes, JavaScript. Plus: the dunder is back! Links: Introducing ICACloud: iCloud Simplified « The Mental Blog drewmccormack/icloudaccess « GitHub Using Dropbox with Stevens Creek Software iOS Apps A Few of My Favorite Things « Edge Cases Class-based programming « Wikipedia Prototype-based programming « Wikipedia Using a Prototype-based Language for User Interface: The Newton Project’s Experience (PDF) « Walter Smith Code Bubbles « YouTube Benefits of prototypal inheritance over classical? « Stack Overflow Why Prototypal Inheritance Matters « Aadit M Shah History of Programm...

2014-01-2543 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 76: Let's Try iCloud SyncingAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the cool aspects and the frustrating aspects of Apple’s iCloud document syncing. Plus: Wolf disses HyperCard! Links: Andrew Pontious tweet: ““Re edge cases: first iPhone SDK shipped without support for NIBs. Not just jailbreak.” @uliwitness https://alpha.app.net/uliwitness/post/19696633 @edgecasesshow” iPhone SDK « Theocacao 2008 iPhone Software Roadmap « iTunes – Podcasts – Apple Keynotes by Apple Papa Sangre Graham Lee (secboffin) « Twitter iamleeg/IKBClassBrowser « Bitbucket Secure Mac Programming HyperCard « Wikipedia LiveCode | Create apps for multiple platforms. Quickly. Easily. Free. The Podcasting Handbook, by Dan Benjamin Two for One « The Powers of Observation Tha...

2014-01-1842 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 75: A Few of My Favorite ThingsWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about two of his favorite things, live development objects and Code Bubbles. Plus: revisiting Microsoft’s Singularity. Links: In fact, trolls traditionally count like this:… « Fuck Yeah Terry Pratchett destroyo « Twitter UIAccessibilityAnnouncementDidFinishNotification not Firing when Swiping to another element « Stack Overflow What Is a 75th Anniversary Called? « Ask.com The Turing Frights « Edge Cases A non-Windows OS? Microsoft drops clues « CNET News Peter Hosey « NSBrief Steve Jobs previews NeXTSTEP 3.0 at NeXTWorld Expo (1992) « YouTube Interface Builder « Wikipedia CouchDB « Wikipedia Dashcode « Wikipedia Code Bubbles Home Page Code Bubbles « YouTube Light Table Code Canvas vs. Code Bubbles vs...

2014-01-1146 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 74: AccessibilityAndrew Pontious along with Wolf Rentzsch delves into Apple’s accessibility APIs for iOS. Links: WWDC 2013 Session 202 Accessibility in iOS Accessibility Programming Guide for iOS Apple iOS Apps Film from WWDC 2012 « YouTube Ariadne GPS rdar://15495675 Cell shifts under VoiceOver when accessibility APIs are overridden « Open Radar rdar://15498013 Strings properties in cell subclass -> undesired accessibility element for cell « Open Radar Rejected Episode Titles: “I Like the Way You Think.” “Really? Nobody Else Seems To.” Don’t Be Stupid! What the Darn Thing’s Gonna Do Don’t Smush Together Things Instances of Deep Polish A Maintenance Smell...

2013-12-2845 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 73: Sequential ConsistencyWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about sequential consistency and memory models by dressing up Andrew as a Processor and himself as Main Memory. Special involuntary cameo by Daniel Jalkut the Cache (not really). Links: WWDC 2010 Session 207 Network Apps for iPhone OS, Part 1 WWDC 2010 Session 208 Network Apps for iPhone OS, Part 2 MVCNetworking Sample Code ARM Is Kind of Like Dark Matter « Edge Cases atomic Weapons: The C++ Memory Model and Modern Hardware « Sutter’s Mill Daniel Jalkut « The Setup Memory Ordering in Modern Microprocessors, Part I « Linux Journal Memory Ordering in Modern Microprocessors, Part II « Linux Journal...

2013-12-2247 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 72: It's Not Just Code, It's UnicodeAndrew Pontious talks hexy to Wolf Rentzsch by going on at length about Unicode: its design, its planes (astral and otherwise), and its UTF-16 and UTF-8 encodings. Plus: backup followup. Links: International Backup Awareness Day « Coding Horror Backing Up Live VMware Fusion Virtual Machines « rentzsch.tumblr.com Using ZFS Snapshots on Time Machine backups. « Matt Connolly’s Blog Bavarious tweet: “Some NSString operations in the light of @edaqa’s ‘The string type is broken’ post: http://mortoray.com/2013/11/27/the-string-type-is-broken/” The string type is broken « Musing Mortoray ~ On Programming and Language Design Unicode « Wikipedia Plane (Dungeons & Dragons) UTF-32 « Wikipedia U...

2013-12-1347 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 71: Libraries vs Collaborating ObjectsWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about software interface design, using jQuery’s Ajax functionality as an example of a “library” API style and NSURLConnection as an example of a “collaborating objects” API style. Plus: AFNetworking, and NSURLSession. Links: jQuery jQuery « Wikipedia Shorthand Methods « jQuery API Documentation Low-Level Interface « jQuery API Documentation NSURLConnection Class Reference URL Loading System Programming Guide: Using NSURLConnection Caching and NSURLConnection « Black Pixel Quinn “The Eskimo!” ASIHTTPRequest is no more…. « Steve Streza, Google+ Sam Marshall tweet: “@rentzsch it boils down to too much bloat and unnecessary boilerplate code for doing relatively simple things.” Sam Marshall twee...

2013-12-0855 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 70: Android Is Like Moving to FranceAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about taking the very first steps to try to develop for Android, including why he’s thinking about it, why companies like Eclipse even if he doesn’t, and why he had to turn to Stack Overflow almost immediately. Links: Ramping Up On Android Development « carpeaqua Why an 80 Percent Market Share Might Only Represent Half of Smartphone Users « theguardian.com Google Play now drives 25% more downloads than iOS app store, has 50% the revenue « VentureBeat Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide « Big Nerd Ranch Android Developers Evan DeLaney tweet: “Dear Xcode, I u...

2013-11-2345 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 69: The Time Machine Worst-Case ScenarioWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about backup. Topics include Time Machine, the sadness of Time Capsule, SuperDuper, clonedrive (Wolf’s own software), CrashPlan, Backblaze, and Arq. Links: Time Machine (OS X) « Wikipedia Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review, Mobile Time Machine « Ars Technica Finder 10.9 Disk Space Embellishment « rentzsch.tumblr.com Microsoft Outlook, Macintosh « Wikipedia Retrospect 10 and Instant Scan « Michael Tsai fts(3) Mac OS X Developer Tools Manual Page Time Machine Failure « rentzsch.tumblr.com using FSevents for backup - is it reliable enough? « lists.apple.com Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “Apparently accidentally deleted a bunch of files bac...

2013-11-1654 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 68: Improve Your App's Performance with This One Weird TipAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about performance, including the difference ways to define performance improvements, techniques Andrew himself has used, and tips from Apple’s WWDC sessions. Plus: bcrypt is soooo 2008. Links: A Cryptography Tourist « Edge Cases PBKDF2 « Wikipedia scrypt « Wikipedia In the Magical World of Threads « Edge Cases Threads Are Interesting « Edge Cases WWDC 2013 Session 211 Core Data Performance Optimization and Debugging Confirmed: Objective-C ARC is slow. Don’t use it! (sarcasm off) « Learn & Master Cocos2D Game Development The Language of Cross-Platform Development « Edge Cases WWDC 2013 Session 204 What’s New with Multitasking When You’re New to a Cod...

2013-11-0942 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 67: Fillers and SpillersWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about his Çingleton 3 presentation, “Fillers and Spillers”: his terms for those who advance human progress (such as scientist, engineers, and artists) and those who propagate those advancements to everyone else. Links: Çingleton Conference Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “the entirety of my political philosophy in one animated gif http://imgur.com/oYr4LxF” The Prince « Wikipedia USA Today « Wikipedia Popular Science « Wikipedia Discover (magazine) « Wikipedia New Scientist « Wikipedia Walmart « Wikipedia Thomas Kinkade « Wikipedia Banksy « Wikipedia [C4 release]; « rentzsch.tumblr.com Q&A with Rentzsch « The Macalope Advanced Technology Group « Wikipedia Rejected Episode Titles: Not a Me...

2013-11-0132 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 66: The Language of Cross-Platform DevelopmentAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the challenges of cross-platform development, including Mac vs. Windows, OS X vs. iOS, and iOS 6 vs. iOS 7. Links: C (programming language) « Wikipedia 64-Bit Transition Guide, Data Type Changes Andrew Pontious tweet: “Things I didn’t miss from Mac 64-bit programming on iOS — Apple ridiculous inability to handle NSInteger well in format strings.” Greg Parker tweet: “%zd, %tu, %tx (signed, unsigned, hex) currently format NSInteger and NSUInteger with no warnings.” Then, You’re Just Writing C++ « Edge Cases A Little Slice of Windows in My IDE « Edge Cases iOS 7 Transition Guide: Supporting...

2013-10-2650 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 65: Threads Are InterestingWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about threads, explaining what they are, giving them a robust defense, and providing hints about his sordid concurrency past. (Spoiler: GCD wins in the end.) Links: Modern Operating Systems, 3rd Edition, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum « Amazon.com rentzsch/mach_inject « GitHub Implementing Threaded IO on the MacOS « Red Shed Software via Wayback Machine Red Shed Threads « Red Shed Software via Wayback Machine Mach’s C Threads « Hurd Extras POSIX Threads Programming « Livermore Computing Center MacHack « Wikipedia Napster « Wikipedia rentzsch/JRErr « github.com libdispatch « Mac OS Forge The C10K problem « Dan Kegel’s Web Hostel ...

2013-10-1355 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 64: Slobbering over Xcode 5 Auto LayoutAndrew Pontious tells Wolf Rentzsch about the changes in Xcode 5, including a more iOS-like appearance, expanded SCM functionality, new unit test UI, and most importantly, a very welcome overhaul of Interface Builder’s Auto Layout support. Links: Is there a way to compile for ARM rather than Thumb in Xcode 4? « Stack Overflow What’s New in Xcode 5 Andrew Pontious tweet: “Pro tip: tell all your dev friends about the Xcode 5 switch to put the new comparison view on the right. They often bawl with joy.” Rectangles on a String « Edge Cases Slinging CGRects Around « Edge Cases WWDC 2013 S...

2013-10-0648 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 63: ARM Is Kind of Like Dark MatterWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about ARM64: its history, its advantages, and its surprisingly unsurprising ISA (instruction set architecture). Links: earthlingsoft Acorn Computers « Wikipedia ARM architecture « Wikipedia Western Design Center « Wikipedia WDC Founder « Western Design Center Newton (platform) « Wikipedia Larry Tesler’s corrections to Owen W. Linzmayer’s Apple Confidential The History of The ARM Architecture: From Inception to IPO (PDF) The ARM Diaries, Part 1: How ARM’s Business Model Works « AnandTech ARMv8-A Architecture Reference Manual « ARM Information Center One instruction set computer « Wikipedia ARM Architecture Reference Manual Extracts (local path): /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Appli...

2013-09-2849 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 62: Primal Debugging SystemsAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about debugging: the oddity of combining a programmer’s creation role with mystery solving, debugging difficulty levels, and the tools we use, including Instruments and lldb. Plus: git bisect. Links: Don’t Expect Anything To Work « Edge Cases Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “just wrote a two-line function. Both lines had a bug in them” Wild Schemes « The Powers of Observation The Graffiti of the Software Development World « Edge Cases Your Logging System Isn’t Advanced Enough « Edge Cases GDB: The GNU Project Debugger LLDB Homepage WWDC 2013 Session 407 Debugging with Xcode WWDC 2013 Session 413 Ad...

2013-08-2549 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 61: A Cryptography TouristWolf Rentzsch tries to scare Andrew Pontious with all the decisions you’re likely to get wrong when implementing a cryptographic system and gives some advice on how to cope. (To skip the beginning infodump, start at 7:50.) Links: All the crypto code you’ve ever written is probably broken « bascule Block cipher mode of operation, Electronic codebook (ECB) « Wikipedia Padding oracle attacks: in depth « SkullSecurity Block cipher mode of operation, Counter (CTR) « Wikipedia Message authentication code « Wikipedia SHA-1 « Wikipedia Don’t Hash Secrets « benlog via Wayback Machine Everything you need to know about hash length extension attacks « SkullS...

2013-08-1737 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 60: When You're New to a CodebaseAndrew Pontious covers with Wolf Rentzsch three aspects of learning the source code of an unfamiliar project: teaching someone else your codebase, learning a new codebase yourself, and the extra steps Andrew takes. Links: Testing Whether You Believe in Fairies « Edge Cases WWDC 2013 Session 224 Designing Code for Performance If You’re a File System Geek « Edge Cases matt_connolly tweet: “Don’t shout at your servers. @rentzsch @edgecasesshow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4” Shouting in the Datacenter « YouTube Putting Your Scent on the Code « Edge Cases Victoria Wang (violasong) tweet: ““As Rumsfeld would say, it’s a *known* s...

2013-08-1048 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 59: If You're a File System GeekWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about the past, present, and future of file systems, from MFS to ZFS and beyond. Plus, how Apple could advance the state of the art with SSDs. Links: Macintosh File System « Wikipedia Hierarchical File System « Wikipedia HFS Plus « Wikipedia Mac OS 8.1: “Where Have All My Files Gone?” ZFS data integrity explained « Ars Technica Belt and Suspenders « Hypercritical Computational Skeuomorphism « Hypercritical FileVault 2 « Wikipedia Fusion Drive « Wikipedia Unix File System « Wikipedia Be File System « Wikipedia Dominic Giampaolo’s Home Page ZFS « Wikipedia Shouting in the Datacenter « YouTube Don J Brady (DonJBrady) « Twitter ZEVO « GreenBytes ...

2013-08-0354 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 58: Testing Whether You Believe in FairiesAndrew Pontious talks about interviewing for a job as a developer with Wolf Rentzsch: linked lists, trick questions, big-O notation, and more. Links: Chris Hanson tweet: “@rentzsch PowerTalk came with System 7 Pro (7.1.1), in late 1993. It wasn’t from the “MacOS 8 era.” It predated the PowerMac! /cc @apontious” Black Pixel All Or Nothing « Marco Arment JobScore collabedit Big O notation « Wikipedia Rejected Episode Titles: I’ve Just Got Two Short Ones Keychain: It’s Not That Exciting The Andrew Pontious and Wolf Rentzsch of Objective-C Hell, There Might Have Been Don’t You Use Oils, or Maybe Just Wate...

2013-07-2749 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 57: Both Praise and Condemn KeychainWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about the upsides and downsides as well as the history of OS X’s (and now iOS’s) Keychain. Links: Keychain (Apple) « Wikipedia Security Forum - CDSA « The Open Group Secure Mac Programming, by Graham Lee EMKeychain « Extendmac Pimp My Code, Part 12: Frozen in Carbonite « Call Me Fishmeal via Wayback Machine nicklockwood/FXKeychain « GitHub SecurID « Wikipedia History of OS X Keychain Integration in 1Password « 1Password 3 User Guide Rejected Episode Titles: Yes, Such a Newbie! Internet Email, and DECMail, and CompuServe The Only Part of PowerTalk That Survives My Bad Attitud...

2013-07-2047 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 56: A Client of TestFlightAndrew Pontious goes over with Wolf Rentzsch the basics of Apple’s code signing (or co-designing) infrastructure and how they help (or hinder) beta-testing distribution service TestFlight. Links: Lewis and Clark Expedition « Wikipedia TestFlight HockeyApp Why Hockey over TestFlight? « HockeyApp Support App Distribution Guide Jonathan Wight (schwa) tweet: “@apontious use for development installs a developer disk image onto device. ideviceinstaller might help.” WWDC 2010 Session 108 Managing Mobile Devices Distributing Enterprise Apps for iOS Devices: Installing apps wirelessly How does TestFlight do it? « Stack Overflow iOS Wireless App Distribution [Updated] « http://jeffreysambells.com Is it really free? « TestFlight TestFlight...

2013-07-1342 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 55: The Pragmatic and the AcademicWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about the pros and cons of two routes to programming knowledge: the self-taught way (employed by both hosts), and the top-down way of a computer science degree. Links: Bill & Ted (franchise) « Wikipedia Bitsplitting With Buzz Andersen « Bitsplitting The Perils of JavaSchools « Joel on Software Google staffing boss: Our old hiring procedures were ‘worthless’ « The Register Computer Lib / Dream Machines « Wikipedia Computer Lib / Dream Machines « UbuZip Text CS is not for me « rentzsch.tumblr.com Why MIT now uses python instead of scheme for its undergraduate CS program « cemerick Lists and Lists « Zarf...

2013-07-0653 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 54: No Carbon This Time AroundAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the risks and burdens developers will face updating their apps for iOS 7. Links: Hall & Oates « Wikipedia Patrick Burleson tweet: “Do you guys violate your other NDAs with such abandon as you do your one with Apple?” iOS 7 As Defense « Marco.org Close Encounters of the Seventh Kind « The Talk Show Facebook Home « Wikipedia Look, and Feel « venomous porridge My Mother Tries an iPhone « rentzsch.tumblr.com David Keegan (iamkgn) tweet: “iOS 6 vs iOS 7. http://moby.to/x3bubd via @dittsn” Rejected Episode Titles: When I Say ‘Cover’, of Course, I Mean...

2013-06-2943 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 53: The Poetry of Donald RumsfeldWolf Rentzsch talks about software estimation with Andrew Pontious and why he’s given up even trying (hint: he found something that works better). Links: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde « Wikipedia Edge Cases tweet: “In our last episode, we said we were taking 1 week off for WWDC. But we’re taking 2 weeks off, sorry! We’ll be back the weekend of 6/22-23.” Code Complete, First Edition « Steve McConnell Jeff Atwood (codinghorror) « Twitter Rapid Development « Steve McConnell The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld « Slate Magazine The non-linear relationship of coding effort and results « Brent Simmons Painle...

2013-06-2135 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 52: The iOS Version of Cocoa BindingsAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the odd duck that is NSFetchedResultsController, as well as a bunch of Core Data issues, such as using SUBQUERY. Reminder: no podcast next week, due to WWDC. Links: Florent Pillet tweet: “@edgecasesshow @rentzsch Add NSLogger to your logging toolchest https://github.com/fpillet/NSLogger … – way more powerful than name suggests” fpillet/NSLogger « GitHub Poll: Do you add the CocoaPods “Pods” project files to your source code repository? « CocoaHeads — Indianapolis (Indianapolis, IN) « Meetup Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “ran into the problem of trying to say __FILE__ & __LINE__ in last @edgecasesshow. Totally adopting http://ned...

2013-06-0140 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 51: Your Logging System Isn't Advanced EnoughWolf Rentzsch continues the conversation about logging with Andrew Pontious, including a spirited debate on the merits of levels, his own logging package JRLog, and Cocoa Lumberjack. Links: Smokey and the Bandit « Wikipedia logger(1) OS X Manual Page log4j « Wikipedia robbiehanson/CocoaLumberjack « GitHub Log4Cocoa « SourceForge endSly/Log4Cocoa « GitHub rentzsch/JRLog « GitHub Weien Wang (weienw) « Twitter Rejected Episode Titles: I’m Sorry—Blogging, What? Flogging? Slogging? Clogging? The Disease of Us Self-Taught Learner People Kind of in the Mysterious Mode There Wrote It off Totally and Stayed the Hell Away If You’ve Been Burne...

2013-05-2543 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 50: The Graffiti of the Software Development WorldAndrew Pontious talks about logging with Wolf Rentzsch, including Xcode breakpoint actions and the Apple System Log. Plus: lots of CocoaPods followup, and a surprise ending! Links: B.J. and the Bear « Wikipedia Common Misconceptions · CocoaPods/CocoaPods Wiki « GitHub MacRuby « Wikipedia How does Bundler bundle? « Pat Shaughnessy Eloy Durán on Twitter Matt Massicotte on Twitter WWDC 2012 Session 412 Debugging in Xcode #1: NSLog(“Debug”); « iOS Development: You’re Doing It Wrong Why ASL? « Idle Time Archive for the ‘Apple System Logger’ Category « Idle Time Rejected Episode Titles: Something and the Something By “Extensive” I Mean Three People Have Talke...

2013-05-1842 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 49: I Do Care a Lot About DependenciesWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about the upsides and downsides of CocoaPods, as well as other techniques for sharing code and tracking dependencies between projects. Links: Pinky and the Brain « Wikipedia CocoaPods: The Objective-C Library Manager The Ping of Installer Technologies « Edge Cases Tony Arnold tweet: “@danielpunkass @rentzsch @schwa you can add the Pods project as a subproject. Worked for me, then I just accepted the workspace.” Wild Schemes « The Powers of Observation Jonathan Wight tweet: “@rentzsch That plus the MacRuby requirement, the horrible pod file format, the fact it can run random code on my box… N...

2013-05-1144 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 48: I Don't Finish the BooksAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the resources we use as developers to learn: books, Stack Overflow, Twitter, blogs, and, yes, conferences like WWDC. Links: The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show « Wikipedia Stack Overflow Apple Developer Forums Big Nerd Ranch Thriving in an App Store World « Jury.me The next generation of Instapaper « Marco.org NetNewsWire acquired by Black Pixel « Brent Simmons NSBlog Semantic Version Branches for Submodules « rentzsch.tumblr.com Rejected Episode Titles: I’ve Gone with the Dub Dub An Integral Part of the Process That’s Programming for You Don’t Do Step 4 ...

2013-05-0446 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 47: Slinging CGRects AroundWolf Rentzsch continues the conversation with Andrew Pontious about Auto Layout: its yays and its nays, Wolf’s inevitable new GitHub projects to ease its usage, and alternatives such as ReactiveCocoaLayout. Links: The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet « Wikipedia Erica Sadun tweet: “suh-DOOOOOON. :)” Peter Hosey tweet: “@uliwitness @rentzsch They replaced both PackageMaker and package_maker with a new CLI tool.” Rasmus Sten tweet: “@edgecasesshow OS X keeps track of files installed by pkg. Try e.g. “pkgutil –file-info /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.fpsaud.plist”” jbafford/xarfs « GitHub unixorn/luggage « GitHub munki - Managed software installation for OS X « Google Project H...

2013-04-2751 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 46: Rectangles on a StringAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about Auto Layout from the newbie’s perspective. In this, he’s aided by Erica Sadun’s book iOS Auto Layout Demystified. (Interface Builder winds up being less helpful.) Links: Rizzoli & Isles « Wikipedia Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “Did Apple ever publish the “WordPlay” Auto Layout demo code from Peter Ammon’s WWDC 2012 Session 228? It’s not in wwdc_2012_session_code.dmg” Words Play « Stand Alone, Inc. Cocoa Auto Layout Guide: About Cocoa Auto Layout Heroic Measures « Edge Cases Nibs and Xibs and Storyboards, O My « Edge Cases iOS Auto Layout Demystified, by Erica Sadun « Amazo...

2013-04-2047 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 45: One Little Package of HateWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about how OS X’s installer technology is dangerous, complicated, obsolete, under-documented, and feature-poor. Links: Tom and Jerry « Wikipedia Practical Perforce, Chapter 7: How Software Evolves (PDF) « O’Reilly Media Installer VISE for Macintosh « MindVision Software Windows Installer « Wikipedia gzip « Wikipedia pax (Unix) « Wikipedia cpio « Wikipedia Why is cpio better than tar? « Kevin J. Wang’s Ramblings bom(5) OS X Manual Page Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “looks like Distribution-format .pkg’s don’t support preflight/postflight scripts, only preinstall/postinstall scripts” Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “which is sad, since Packages.app generates Distribution-format .pkg’s. Once again I go i...

2013-04-1350 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 44: Putting Your Scent on the CodeAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about editor round-tripping: taking source code with one format, such as K&R-style braces, converting it losslessly to another format, and back. Are the trade-offs worth it? Links: Hardcastle and McCormick « Wikipedia Round-trip engineering « Wikipedia The Tabs and Spaces of Outrageous Fortune « Edge Cases Abstract syntax tree « Wikipedia Parse tree « Wikipedia Uncrustify - Source Code Beautifier for C-like languages Andrew Pontious tweet: “Being a naughty child is great practice for being a QA engineer. Not listening to “don’t touch that!” and “leave that alone!”” Rejected Episode Titles: Why Don’t We Talk A...

2013-04-0637 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 42: In a UI TarpitAndrew Pontious starts talking with Wolf Rentzsch about why native application UIs are better than website UIs, but ends up talking about why there are no ads in most iOS apps. Links: A second spring of cleaning « Google Official Blog Three Months to Scale NewsBlur « The NewsBlur Blog Ceding the Crown (article deprecating market share) « Daring Fireball Decoupage « Wikipedia TRS-80 Model 100 « Wikipedia Rejected Episode Titles: Native vs. Web It’s Probably Just Me I’ll Do Your Dirty Work for You I’m Not Sure What the Moral of That Is Is It Dying Again Yet? ...

2013-03-2447 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 41: The Tofu ScaleWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about philosophical and practical aspects of branching in version control. Links: The Ren & Stimpy Show « Wikipedia Concurrent Versions System (CVS) « Wikipedia Apache Subversion Svnmerge.py « SubversionWiki Perforce Why (Not) Perforce « rentzsch.com via Wayback Machine Practical Perforce, by Laura Wingerd « Amazon.com The Flow Of Change « YouTube A successful Git branching model « nvie.com nvie/gitflow « GitHub GitHub Flow « Scott Chacon Welcome | Legit (Git Workflow for Humans) kennethreitz/legit « GitHub GitHub for Mac Andrew Pontious tweet: “WTF!? GitHub Mac app just took a Terminal filesystem change and turned it into a commit wit...

2013-03-1653 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 40: Heroic MeasuresAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about how software developers often have to go “above and beyond” as part of their work. Links: #459: Do I have to destroy my health to be in grad school? « CaptainAwkward.com Capability Maturity Model « Wikipedia Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency, by Tom DeMarco « Amazon.com Rejected Episode Titles: I Would Call That a General Glow This is Derailing Rather Rapidly It Captures the Beginner’s Mind Chocolate Frosted Ego Batter I Have a Cape and Everything “Realistic” Is in Air Quotes I’m Totally Butch...

2013-03-0948 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 39: Productivity PornWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about his favorite Getting Things Done-oriented applications, such as OmniFocus, TaskPaper, and a few surprises. Plus: Charlie’s Angels villains. Links: Simon & Simon « Wikipedia Adventure Addendum « The Powers of Observation 43 Folders | Time, Attention, and Creative Work Charlie’s Angels (film) « Wikipedia The Thin Man « Movie Villains OmniFocus for Mac « The Omni Group TaskPaper — Simple to-do list software for Mac & iPhone « Hog Bay Software Day One | A simple Journal for iPhone, iPad and Mac App Store BusyCal FlexTime for Mac OS X « Red Sweater Software rentzsch/pomodoro « GitHub Nicholas Riley: Software (Pester and Shr...

2013-03-0248 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 38: A Programmer and a PuzzlerAndrew Pontious along with Wolf Rentzsch talks about Andrew’s experiences with text adventure games: a bit of their history, what it was like to develop them, and his eventual deal-breaking frustration with puzzles. Links: Mork & Mindy « Wikipedia Their Job Is to Break It « Edge Cases Interactive fiction « Wikipedia Zork « Wikipedia The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (video game) « Wikipedia Colossal Cave Adventure « Wikipedia Myst « Wikipedia Infocom « Wikipedia Sierra Online « Wikipedia Inform TADS, the Text Adventure Development System Infocom - Zork Downloads The Interactive Fiction Archive Interactive Fiction Competition XYZZY Awards intfiction.org, the Interactive Fiction Commu...

2013-02-2343 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 37: In the Tree of Your TODO ListWolf Rentzsch, a GTD cultist, and Andrew Pontious, who’s GTD-curious, talk about Getting Things Done in their fluffiest episode yet. Links: Kate & Allie « Wikipedia Neglected Potential Nick Arnott (noir) on Twitter Andrew Pontious tweet: “Recently listened to Build & Analyze #106 After Dark http://5by5.tv/afterdark/296, & I’ve decided to put effort into app.net again.” Andrew Pontious tweet: “So, Twitterers: follow me (same username) on app.net, and I’ll post a behind-the-scenes tidbit re: @edgecasesshow every day.” Dave Reed tweet: “@rentzsch isn’t the fact that oauth works after password change a bad thing since someone who s...

2013-02-1647 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 36: A Zeno's Paradox of AuthenticationWolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about practical OAuth: how it works, tips and tricks about how to integrate it into your apps, and the ups and downs of version 2.0. Links: Starsky and Hutch « Wikipedia OAuth « Wikipedia Episode 76: This Should Be Bonus Money « Core Intuition mattgemmell/MGTwitterEngine « GitHub RFC 5849 - The OAuth 1.0 Protocol « Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) OAuth Community Site OAuth Authentication Flow Diagram Zeno’s paradoxes « Wikipedia xAuth « Twitter Developers rentzsch/OAuthConsumer « GitHub OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell « hueniverse OAuth Bearer Tokens are a Terrible Idea « hueniverse Rejected Episode Titles: The Grumpier Sid...

2013-02-0956 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 35: Their Job Is to Break ItAndrew Pontious, with second guest cohost Peter Hosey, talks about the strange and wacky world of quality assurance engineers. Links: The Tabs and Spaces of Outrageous Fortune « Edge Cases Tabs vs. spaces redux « Idle Time A Little Slice of Windows in My IDE « Edge Cases Peter Hosey (boredzo) on Twitter Andrew Pontious tweet: “I wrote essay “Tales from the Code Front: Anatomy of the TADS 2.2 Plural-Singulars Utility” in (c) 1996. Style recognizably like Edge Cases.” Uli Kusterer tweet: “@apontious Ooooo… all your TADS exploits and lessons learned from TADS as a language sound like good future EC topics :-)” H...

2013-02-0342 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 34: Xcode, I Want to Get Organized!Andrew Pontious, accompanied by Wolf Rentzsch, lets loose in this extra-long episode with his second Xcode 4 rant, this time focusing on Xcode’s overstuffed Organizer window. Links: Tenspeed and Brown Shoe « Wikipedia My First Xcode 4 Rant « Edge Cases Hypercritical #100: Metacritical « 5by5 Peter Hosey tweet: “For anyone who missed it last night, I made a couple of videos showing off how I work in AppCode: http://www.cocoaheadsnyc.org/2013/01/07/peter-hoseys-favorite-appcode-features/” Hex Fiend, A fast and clever hex editor for Mac OS X Xcode 3.0 Release Note (1 of 4) « xcode-users Xcode 3.0 Release Note (2 of 4) « xcode-users Xcode 3.0 Release Note (3 of 4) « xcode-users Xcode 3.0 Re...

2013-01-2757 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 33: Flattry Will Get You EverywhereWolf Rentzsch along with Andrew Pontious uses the Swedish micropayment service Flattr as an excuse to talk about inter-application communication yet again as well as introduce Compliment, his app to make it easier for other apps to integrate with Flattr. Links: Bert and Ernie « Wikipedia TaskPaper - Simple to-do list software for Mac & iPhone OmniFocus « The Omni Group Wolf Rentzsch tweet: ““FU Chad Sellers” in my notes for upcoming @edgecasesshow episode. I keep on looking at it and wondering “why am I so angry at @c_had?”” Pear Note for Mac « Useful Fruit Software Neutral - A Casual Car Sh...

2013-01-1941 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 32: The Case Against Xcode PluginsAndrew Pontious covers with Wolf Rentzsch the logic behind why Apple won’t introduce a public Xcode plugin architecture. Plus: how Mike Lee solved the halting problem. Links: Captain & Tennille « Wikipedia ryanmaxwell/UncrustifyX « GitHub Mike Lee tweet: “While you were distracted by CES, we solved the halting problem. http://pressdoc.com/p/000s8a” The Hunting of the Snark « Wikipedia Surround SCM Xcode 3 Integration « Seapine Software Surround SCM Xcode 4 Integration « Seapine Software The Scorpion and the Frog « Wikipedia Andrew Pontious tweet: “Is the hex viewer in Xcode, used to view memory contents, from Hex Fiend? I thought it was...

2013-01-1237 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 31: The Turing FrightsWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about Microsoft’s research OS, Singularity, which breaks through the stagnation of current operatings systems with innovative use of static analysis, communication channel contracts, and more. Links: Donny & Marie (1976 TV series) « Wikipedia Chris Hanson tweet: “@rentzsch @apontious Mach was created to break an OS into cooperating “servers” - FS, VM, net, devices - not for “personalities.”” Singularity « Microsoft Research Singularity (operating system) « Wikipedia Native Client « Google Developers Google Native Client « Wikipedia Static program analysis « Wikipedia Spec# « Wikipedia Sing# « Wikipedia Finite-state machine « Wikipedia Translation lookaside buffer « Wikipedia Object-capability model « Wikipedia Midori (operating system) « Wikip...

2013-01-0546 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 30: One Ring to Cocoa-Bind Them AllAndrew Pontious explores with Wolf Rentzsch key-value coding, key-value observing, and Cocoa Bindings: what’s interesting about them, and how they can be a stack of suck. And remember: holiday break till January! Links: Sonny & Cher « Wikipedia 5 key-value coding approaches in Cocoa « Cocoa with Love Key-Value Coding Programming Guide: Introduction apontious/One-Ring-to-Cocoa-Bind-Them-All « github.com Key-Value Observing Programming Guide: Introduction Cocoa Bindings Programming Topics NSTableViewBinding Sample Code Independent software vendor « Wikipedia OGNL - Object Graph Navigation Library « Apache Commons Rejected Episode Titles: I’m All for Jumping Right In Apple Even Has a Patent on It Shut...

2012-12-0847 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 29: Squirting Code Across Address SpacesWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about mach_override (his project for dynamically overriding functions) and mach_inject (his project for cross-process code execution). You’ll never guess who uses them! Links: Penn & Teller « Wikipedia UIStoryboard Issues « toxicsoftware.com iOS Unit Testing rentzsch/mach_override « github.com rentzsch/mach_inject « github.com Tagged pointers and fast-pathed CFNumber integers in Lion « Objectivist-C PowerPC Function Calls (talks about Transition Vectors) « MacTech MacHack « Wikipedia Re: Patching an application (long) (mentions Ed Wynne and libPatch) « cocoa-dev Modern Operating Systems (3rd Edition), by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1st Edition contained Mach as a case stu...

2012-12-0254 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 28: The Plumber's Guide to BlocksAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about blocks: their history, why they’re weird, and why Apple should have just gone ahead and made them an Objective-C API. Links: Williams sisters « Wikipedia Asterisk and Obelisk « The Powers of Observation Asterix « Wikipedia You Can’t Run a Script to Test Feel « Edge Cases Automatic for the People « The Powers of Observation Automatic for the People, R.E.M. album « Wikipedia Language Specification for Blocks « clang Blocks (C Language Extension) « Wikipedia Blocks Programming Topics: Introduction Basic Blocks « bbum’s weblog-o-mat Boost Lambda Library « Wiki Wiki Web The Good, the Bad, and the...

2012-11-2441 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 27: Where mogenerator Really Picks It UpWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about his popular open source Core Data code generation tool, mogenerator. Plus: why Wolf may or may not be Batman. Links: Instruments User Guide: Automated UI Testing Randy Luecke tweet: “@rentzsch Cappuccino is not GPL. It’s LGPL; per the last episode of @edgecasesshow” mogenerator + X’mod rentzsch/mogenerator « github.com rentzsch.com: mogenerator: Core Data codegen via Wayback Machine Posts tagged “mogenerator” on rentzsch.tumblr.com EOGenerator « Rubicode Generation Gap « IBM Research Core Data Programming Guide: Creating and Deleting Managed Objects magicalpanda/MagicalRecord « github.com mogenerator/contributed templates « github.com Upgrading t...

2012-11-1855 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 26: You Can't Run a Script to Test FeelAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about automated tests for Cocoa applications and the very particular times when he finds them useful. (Hint: not ongoing maintenance.) Links: Cagney & Lacey « Wikipedia Google search, Peter Hosey + AppCode, on Twitter Putting It to the Test « The Powers of Observation Test-driven development « Wikipedia Unit testing « Wikipedia Sen:te - OCUnit Chris Hanson - Xcode unit testing articles updated « LiveJournal Eschatology, new Chris Hanson blog Xcode Unit Testing Guide: About Unit Testing Teststands for Exploratory Code « rentzsch.com via Wayback Machine Expect (Unix tool) « Wikipedia Rejected Episode Titles: Just Spit It...

2012-11-1045 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 25: We're Just Dot-J, BabyWolf Rentzsch enthuses (and Andrew Pontious mostly listens) about Cappuccino, an advanced Web framework for making desktop-class web applications, essentially “Cocoa for the Web”, with all the power and pitfalls that entails. Objective-J, anyone? Links: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid « Wikipedia Cappuccino (application development framework) « Wikipedia Cappuccino Project | Desktop-Class Web Applications cappuccino/cappuccino « Github 280 Slides: Like Apple Keynote, But Online « TechCrunch 280 North, Inc. « Wikipedia Francisco Tolmasky’s personal website Ross Boucher’s personal website Tom Robinson’s personal website Objective-J « Wikipedia Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach, by Brad Cox and Andrew Novobilski « Amazon altJS compile-to-JavaScript language list S...

2012-11-0251 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 24: Make Xibs Look GoodAndrew Pontious spends the entire episode with Wolf Rentzsch on followup, including someone trying AppCode based on his “recommendation” and a somewhat deeper, less rosy look at storyboards. Links: Abbott and Costello « Wikipedia letterpress « atebits Murphy Brown « Wikipedia 5by5 | The Incomparable #111: These Go to Eleven Statler and Waldorf « Wikipedia The Muppet Show « Wikipedia carpeaqua by Justin Williams Justin Williams tweet: “@rentzsch @edgecasesshow @apontious I love you guys because you’re the Statler and Waldorf of Objective-C” (tweet deleted, no link) Andrew Pontious tweet: “Serious question: of myself and @rentzsch… who’s Statler, and who’s Waldorf?” A Little Slice of Windows...

2012-10-2643 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 23: The Elevator Pitch for Design by ContractWolf Rentzsch uses a simple C function example with Andrew Pontious to demonstrate (in record time!) Bertrand Meyer’s Design by Contract, a cheap way to drastically improve your software quality. Could clang be the key to implementing it in Objective-C? Links: Statler and Waldorf « Wikipedia C (programming language), K&R C « Wikipedia ANSI C « Wikipedia Unit testing « Wikipedia Bertrand Meyer « Wikipedia Object-Oriented Software Construction « Wikipedia Design by contract « Wikipedia A few Macros for Designing by Contract in Objective-C Re: Design by Contract and Objective-C « objc-language Foundation Functions Reference, NSParameterAssert Rejected Episode Titles: Stick a Void in...

2012-10-2041 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 22: Nibs and Xibs and Storyboards, O MyAndrew Pontious explores with Wolf Rentzsch the history of resources on Mac OS, starting with resource forks and ResEdit and ending with the new “storyboard” file format, which receives a shocking thumbs up! Afterwards, Wolf thinks about diffing issues. Links: Graham Lee tweet: “@rentzsch @apontious just caught up with your concurrency show. Did you gents see http://blog.securemacprogramming.com/2012/03/confine-all-the-things/ … ?” Chris Hanson tweet: “@apontious You can also set the tab and indent widths for projects.” Chris Hanson tweet: “@apontious It’s not “initial versus subsequent indent,” it’s “indentation” versus “tab width.”” Petey Hosey tweet: ““If you align your colons [with tabs...

2012-10-1352 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 21: When the Bits Hit the PlatterWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about data encoding and file formats, such as C structs, NSKeyedArchiver, QuickTime, ASN.1, plists, and JSON, as a way to introduce his own new untyped binary format, Lich. Plus: way too much MacGyver. Links: rentzsch/lich « github.com Lich « Wikipedia struct (C programming language) « Wikipedia Directive (programming) « Wikipedia NSCoding - CocoaDev SQLite Home Page Core Data « Wikipedia QuickTime File Format (QTFF) « Wikipedia Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) « Wikipedia Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) « Wikipedia Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) « Wikipedia Privacy-enhanced Electronic Mail « Wikipedia vog/beautify_git_hash « github.com Property li...

2012-10-0537 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 20: The Tabs and Spaces of Outrageous FortuneAndrew Pontious, with Wolf Rentzsch, asks the question developers ask when they have nothing else to talk about: tabs vs spaces? Also: braces styles, UniversalIndentGUI, and how Xcode handles indent levels. Links: github/objective-c conventions Caramello Commercial « YouTube Maintenance and the Cocoa Slide « Edge Cases UniversalIndentGUI Uncrustify - Source Code Beautifier for C-like languages Atlassian SourceTree - Free Mac client for Git, Mercurial, and SVN Idle Time » Blog Archive » Tabs vs. spaces Uncle Jens’s Coding Tips via Wayback Machine Thought Palace Thoughts about large Cocoa projects « Brent Simmons Indent style « Wikipedia Code Insults, Mark I « Call Me F...

2012-09-2941 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 19: In the Magical World of ThreadsWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about concurrency (with the emphasis on “con”), from the earliest Mac SMP machines to the latest software advances such as Actors. Links: The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software, by Herb Sutter Moore’s Law « Wikipedia Symmetric multiprocessing « Wikipedia Multi-core processor « Wikipedia Simultaneous multithreading « Wikipedia Hyper-threading « Wikipedia Interrupt « Wikipedia Process (computing) « Wikipedia Address space « Wikipedia Heap (data structure) « Wikipedia Stack-based memory allocation « Wikipedia Thread (computing) « Wikipedia Event loop « Wikipedia Threading Programming Guide: Run Loops The C10K problem « Dan Kegel’s Web Hostel Nginx Wiki Node.js Ian Baird t...

2012-09-2151 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 18: Port the Present into the PastWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about obsolescence. Do older machines really have to be cut off from the latest OS and application updates? Does higher-level software design (and open source data formats) help or hurt? Links: Andrew Pontious tweet: “I’ve resigned myself to a certain futility about retweeting something from a person who has many more followers than I do.” The Road Back to Tumblr « Red Sweater Blog Hibari: A Mac Twitter client with keyword filtering, muting, inline saved search results, inline conversions, tweet lookup, and more Obsolescence « Wikipedia Planned obsolescence « Wikipedia Market segmentation « Wikipedia ...

2012-09-1550 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 17: Then, You're Just Writing C++Andrew Pontious tries with guest cohost Uli Kusterer to make the case that C++ is a perfectly acceptable language for Objective-C developers to use under certain circumstances. Links: Talking Moose « Wikipedia Uli Kusterer’s GitHub page Uli’s Home Page Orange Juice Liberation Front Repeat Offender Podcast (In German) Cocoa Swap « The Powers of Observation C++ « Wikipedia Function overloading « Wikipedia Functional programming « Wikipedia Generic programming « Wikipedia Duck typing « Wikipedia Maintenance and the Cocoa Slide « Edge Cases Rejected Episode Titles: That’s What Special Effects Are For I Blog a Lot, I Tweet a Lot My Normal Coho...

2012-09-0950 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 16: Talk Like a DeveloperAndrew Pontious uses his new microphone to communicate with Wolf Rentzsch about…the ways developers communicate: in interviews, on the job, and on the Internet. Links: Apple Outsider Ben and Mena Rejected Episode Titles: The Slanderous Things We Say I’m Kind of Salivating Here Cause I Like Pie Gone Dependent The Binary Distinction Andrew’s Tips for Great Lying The Saga of the Schwa Hipstagrapaper Time for Twitter Gossip GitHub Is My Resume Communication Fractal I’m the Guy with the Smug Face Twitter Can Be Their Interview

2012-09-0241 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 15: Brave New World of Interprocess CommunicationWolf Rentzsch follows up with Andrew Pontious about AppleScript, Apple Events, appscript, Distributed Objects, distributed computing, JSTalk, and sandboxing’s IPC implications. Links: appscript « SourceForge has comment on post “Applescript Alternative?” « Clark’s Tech Blog Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “not sure why AppScript is EOL’d: AESendMessage and AEDesc aren’t deprecated in 10.7 SDK http://appscript.sourceforge.net/status.html cc:@mjtsai” Help AppleScripting Notes app in ML? « Arstechnica Forum Re: Crash on AESendMessage « applescript-implementors Fallacies of Distributed Computing « Wikipedia The Subtle Dangers Of Distributed Objects via Wayback Machine NSXPCConnection Class Reference IPC Made Easy: Introducing XPC and NSXPCConnection «...

2012-08-2438 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 14: Maintenance and the Cocoa SlideAndrew Pontious explains with Wolf Rentzsch some of his maintenance best practices, so that you can perform your own “slide” with the greatest of ease. (Andrew’s audio drops occasionally throughout. Sorry, everyone!) Links: The Eero Programming Language Cocoaheads-SF 8/9/2012 Eero Talk Harley-Davidson « Wikipedia Conversations: Truth or Consequences by Jim Hyslop and Herb Sutter « C/C++ Users Journal via Wayback Machine DeleGate « The Powers of Observation Rejected Episode Titles: There Should Be a Song Plucked Free-Range Large Dead Chickens Underscore As a Warning In My Heart of Efficiency Hearts When You Cry Yourself to Sleep At Night...

2012-08-1939 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 13: AppleScript's Glorious FailureWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about why AppleScript is a really awesome language and why it’s basically dead. (And why you should use JSTalk instead.) Links: Why JetBrains (list of companies that use their products) Obsolete once-only headers « GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection AppleScript « Wikipedia William R. Cook « Computer Science Department, University of Texas at Austin ACM SIGPLAN History of programming languages Conferences HOPL-III (2007) History of Programming Languages « Wikipedia AppleScript (draft paper, PDF) by William R. Cook « Computer Science Department, University of Texas at Austin Connections (TV series) « Wikipedia Ruby (programming language) « Wikipedia Execution in the Ki...

2012-08-1152 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 12: A Little Slice of Windows in My IDEAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the JetBrains AppCode IDE, which you can use instead of Xcode to write your iOS apps. Links: Aperture Version History « Wikipedia Mark Thalman tweet: “For an excellent Mac Developer’s Podcast that actually talks about code check out the Edge Cases podcast http://j.mp/OjiunA” Patrick Thomson tweet: “hate to be blunt about this, but if you don’t realize how much of your time objc is wasting you should try using a truly modern language” App Chowder « The Powers of Observation Mark Dagon Hughes tweet: “@apontious I liked the origin...

2012-08-0452 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 11: Pop SoftwareWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about Mac App Store irrelevance, the Sparrow acquisition, and so-called “pop software” and its impact upon independent software developer livelihoods. Links: Wil Shipley tweet: “Now it can be said: SceneKit is the best, most revolutionary API in 15 years. Well-designed, fast, nearly flawless.” The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance « Marco Arment Mac App Store vs Buying Direct « rentzsch.tumblr.com The Apple strategy tax, by John Siracusa « Ars Technica The Mac App Store’s future « Neven Mrgan’s tumbl Strategy Letter V « Joel on Software Entitlement and Acquisition « Matt Gemmell Apple : He...

2012-07-2952 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 10: Not a Free-Range DeveloperAndrew Pontious explores with Wolf Rentzsch why and for how long you should stay in the “veal pen”, whether it’s as a Twitter client developer or an iOS/Mac developer. Bonus: the cat noises are back! Links: Scott Pilgrim « Wikipedia Delivering a consistent Twitter experience « dev.twitter.com Delivering a consistent Twitter experience → « Marco Arment What Twitter could have been « Dalton Caldwell The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter « Alex Payne Twitter Restricts API Use in Ways That Could Kill Your Favorite Client « The Next Web Twitter issues warning to developers: Now, we do it our way «...

2012-07-2139 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 9: Alien Reference CountingWolf Rentzsch enumerates with Andrew Pontious the 5 benefits and 6 issues he sees with Apple’s new Automatic Retain Count system in the longest, most anticipated episode yet! Links: Objective-C Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) « clang cocoaheads/sanfrancisco Wiki Jonathan Wight tweet: “Listening to the @edgecasesshow podcast Wolf is exactly as grumpy as he is on twitter.” Contrarianism by Proxy (Postmodem episode) « Nullary Sources Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “@dwineman @buzz that’s an exact subset of the argument I’ll be making against ARC in the next recording of @edgecasesshow” Wolf Rentzsch tweet: “just wrote a two-line function. Both lines had a bug in...

2012-07-141h 03

Edge Cases Edge Cases 8: iPhone to Every Man, Woman, and ChildAndrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about Apple’s growth and how it will affect developers. Links: Andrew’s Sound Quality Survey The Limits to Growth « Wikipedia Back to the Balance Sheet « asymco P/E Ratio « Wikipedia How Long « The Powers of Observation Paper | FiftyThree Apple Press Info - Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store Simplenote. An easy way to keep notes, lists, ideas, and more. iAd « Wikipedia Baidu « Wikipedia The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades « Call Me Fishmeal I Had A Baby, You Launched An App « Build and Analyze Rejected Episode Titles: Holdin...

2012-07-0845 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 7: If You Look at the Error, You Will CrashWolf Rentzsch rants (there’s that word again) with Andrew Pontious about Apple’s NSError implementation, while also giving a brief history of Mac/Unix error handling and introducing his new JRErr library, which makes NSError usage easier. Links: “Marion, don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens!” « IMDb Andy Lee tweet: “@apontious @rentzsch The mnemonic is “He’s so smart, I wish I could RENT Z SCHool he went to.” You have to imagine a French accent.” errno.h « Wikipedia Mac OS memory management « Wikipedia rentzsch/mach_error-Decod...

2012-06-3039 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 6: For You, I'll File a RadarAndrew Pontious lays out with Wolf Rentzsch three things Apple can do to turn bug reporting into a virtuous cycle, not the vicious cycle it is now. They also discuss problems with the Apple Developer Forums. Links: Caveat-Slash-Manifesto « The Powers of Observation Gary Burghoff « Wikipedia Steve Streza tweet: “That this meme has gone viral is perhaps my greatest and most meaningless contribution to the Apple dev community. http://strez.at/9RI7” Steve Streza “Radar or GTFO” meme picture Radar or GTFO « Black Pixel Fix Radar or GTFO VoodooPad from Flying Meat Open Radar Apple Developer Forums Rejected...

2012-06-2341 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 5: The Ping of Installer TechnologiesWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about the developer ramifications of Apple’s new MacBook Pro Retina displays and the dismal state of third-party library updating infrastructures on the Mac. Links: Subpixel rendering « Wikipedia RubyGems « Wikipedia What is a Python Egg? « Stack Overflow The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network GitHub Sparkle: a free software update framework for the Mac Homebrew: The missing package manager for OS X iTunes Ping « Wikipedia mogenerator + Xmo’d Sort Descriptor Programming Topics: Creating and Using Sort Descriptors (From 2007) Method invocation formatting styles « Cocoa with Love (Mentions Wil Shipley’s indentation style) CocoaPods: The Objecti...

2012-06-2233 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 4: My First Xcode 4 RantAndrew Pontious rants (but not mindlessly) with Wolf Rentzsch about problems in the Xcode 4 project window. Links: Build So Good « The Powers of Observation Text from Xcode Xcode 4 User Guide: About Xcode How to make Xcode’s UI work for you (maybe) « Clever Blog Name A Picture Worth a Thousand Pixels « The Powers of Observation Rejected Episode Titles: The Double Broom The Big Fuzzy Scrollbar Wolf Tracks Low-Bandwidth Form of Tracking That Only Requires a Single Finger Ears on Both Sides and Chin Hanging Down Programming on Ice Killing Off the Swoopy

2012-06-2142 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 3: Sandboxing DayWolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about his blog post “Mac App Store vs Buying Direct”. Links: Daniel Jalkut tweet: “The President has used a word that @rentzsch coined. That’s quite an accomplishment, Wolf! http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/05/obama-im-the-twoosh-master-124603.html (via @rtmfd)” Daniel Jalkut tweet: “Hard to believe it’s been 6 years since C4[0]. @rentzsch transformed my career, and in subtle ways I’m sure he transformed the industry.” Colin Barrett tweet: “C4[0] (and Evening at Adler) were such a huge deal for my career. Can’t really overstate that.” Coda 2, the iPad, and the Future of Computing...

2012-06-2051 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 2: Would They Call it iCode?Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about a version of Xcode for the iPad. Is it possible? What would or should it look it? Is it likely? Links: Upgrading to the Next Model « The Powers of Observation Apple - iPhone 4S - Edit HD movies and trailers with iMovie. Daring Fireball The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me « The Powers of Observation Daring Fireball: iOS Low-Hanging Fruit Textastic - Text, Code and Markup Editor with Syntax Highlighting - FTP, SFTP, Dropbox - for iPad Diet Coda Codea – iPad JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference Re...

2012-05-2542 min

Edge Cases Edge Cases 1: Dot-Mom and Apple PieIn this inaugural podcast, Wolf Rentzsch talks with Andrew Pontious about the good parts and the bad parts of Core Data. Links: Introduction to Core Data Programming Guide Object-relational mapping « Wikipedia Active Record Django EOF - Enterprise Objects Framework « Wikipedia EOF - End-of-File « Wikipedia Software evolution « Wikipedia Upgrading to the Next Model « The Powers of Observation Brent switching away from Core Data « rentzsch.tumblr.com The Law of Leaky Abstractions « Joel on Software SQLite Andrew Pontious on Twitter Wolf Rentzsch on Twitter

2012-05-1333 min