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Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book on the 10,000 hour rule, Outliners. This book proposes that 10,000 of work at anything will lead to success at that. That the people who are real masters have spent this time. If you read more closely, there is more than just 10,000. It’s not that anyone who puts in 10,000 hours will be a success, it’s that talent alone is not enough. You need to put in the work as well. And that is the methology that has been ruling my life more recently. Doing a bunch of things a little bit each day will lead to getting better. Trying to put in at least a piece of code a day (including weekends), has been a goal of mine on my github graph. Not all of it is the same language and not all of it is substantial, but I’m trying to write something everyday. ...

I’m in the stage of my career where I’ve seen a lot of projects from other developers. I’ve inherited good code and bad code, and there a couple of big gotchas I’ve been wanting to talk about. Comments Function Heading Comments When I was in college, I used to write three line comments for everything 1 2 3 4 5 6 //------------------------------ // This Function Squares Pi //------------------------------ float square_pi() { ... } While this comment isn’t wrong, it is unnecessary. The function name square_pi says what it does. Putting in the comment adds more lines to the file without providing any real use. Yes, the compiler will remove it so it doesn’t hurt the running code, but it is repeating what is written below and the function name should be good enough. ...

Swift is a new langauge and still being developed. It is unfair to fully compare develping in swift to developing in Objective-C as the language was very well developed before my experience with it. Still, learning and programming in Swift, as a developing language, has some real challenges. The most challenging of which is that Swift versions can change the validity of previous only examples. I’m really working on learning Swift and trying to master the langauge and libraries around it. I’ve been trying to touch new features instead of just staying in the lane of the features I already know. While things like unwrapping Optionals takes a little bit of getting used to, it’s not that bad. The biggest challenge I’ve had is learning the differences in the langauge version. ...

There are two farmers markets a week on the island. Both are called the Aquidneck Growers Market, and have roughly the same vendors. Many are local to Rhode Island and you can get all sorts of great stuff there. I’m the worst farmer’s market patron. I bring my over stimulated dog and pretty much only go to get a coffee and come home. My two favorite places are: Single Fin Coffee Co (only on Saturdays), and Navad Bakery. Both have finished products, so I don’t have to cook. ...

I’ve been writing iOS software since 2014 when I joined Cabulous (which later rebranded to Flywheel) as their first in house iOS developer. I took this job without really knowing what I was doing. I had done a little bit of work with Objective-C in college (mostly just reading the Hillegass book), but that was before iOS had been released and before people were writing apps. Much of my experience before that was in C, C++, and even JavaScript. ...