After years of using various cross-platform frameworks to publish games and apps to Apple’s AppStore, I decided that for my next app, Apoklisi, I was going to switch to a native approach. SwiftUI seemed promising and so, I decided to give it a shot. Apoklisi is a daily goal and habit tracker. Simple enough of a concept, but the interface is so unique that I knew that there were going to be some hurdles.

Unlike other habit trackers, Apoklisi uses an eclipse to display your progress. A full eclipse means that you’re hitting your goals. Missing these goals causes the…

I have a confession to make. When I first began my career, I was under the impression that the more complicated and longer code was, the more skilled the developer had to be. How can a dozen lines of code compete with hundreds that do the same thing? The latter was clearly doing more, meaning it had to be better.

A few years into my career I met a fellow programmer who was undoubtedly brilliant at coding. He had memorized an entire framework’s documentation, he was utilizing techniques that were considerably more advanced than what we were doing on our…

There are two types of people in the world: those who follow, and those who lead. A senior developer’s role is to provide guidance and insights to his peers using their vast experience, they are a leader. While they may have to make some of the more difficult technical decisions, they also serve as mentors for the rest of their team. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of developers who are confused or misguided as to what it takes to become a senior. Here are some of the traits that I personally look for when vetting a developer.

A senior developer is not someone who is old

I’m…

User interfaces are tough. As a developer, it’s hard conceptualizing an easy to use interface with all the information that we have in our database. As a designer, it’s easy to build something visually appealing while ignoring crucial specs. A product person is a good mediator who can find some middle ground between good design, user experience/interface, and developer constraints–unfortunately not every company has the luxury of having one.

Sometimes, we need to put on a different hat and work on things that we’re not necessarily comfortable in. Luckily, building good user interfaces is a skill that can be learned…

Potty training a toddler is one of the most challenging things I’ve had to do in recent memory. It’s incredibly hard to teach a child that they now need to do their duty in a toilet rather than their oh-so-convenient diaper. There are so many things that can, and will, go wrong–they’re either not ready, it’s easier in a diaper, they forget because they were having fun, they simply don’t want to, and so on. Even when they do get into the habit, there is often some regression, or they’ll learn to pee but not poop in the potty. …

I’ve been building websites, software, and services a couple of decades. I’ve worked with, managed, and mentored a few dozen full-stack developers. Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with many people who have struggled with similar problems. I too have fallen victim to some of these developer pitfalls. The following is advice on how to overcome the most common ones.

If you want eggs for breakfast, don’t build a farm.

I see this one all the time — many developers will over-engineer a simple project because of the prospect that one day they might need to add extra features that are not on the plan. This makes the…