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9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

papereditor.app

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Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#141

Post by jshier »

mthoms wrote: post #138
imbnwa wrote: post #120

I'd been thinking of getting into Apple platform dev, but there really seems to be this strong contradiction in people saying to go full bore Swift/SwiftUI but reading this and as well following the Swiftcord devs' discord, there's a lot of problems with Swift/SwiftUI as a replacement for Obj-C/UIKit/AppKit. There also seems to be more and better documentation/examples for the Obj-C APIs than Swift; yes Obj-C is old,…

I'm in a similar position. Can you not use UIKit in Swift or do you have to use SwiftUI?

Not only can you use UIKit / AppKit in Swift (always have been), you can wrap them into SwiftUI as well. There's really no need to choose nowadays.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#143

Post by lovelyviking »

papereditor wrote: post #43
koopuluri wrote: post #35

Great write-up from a great creator. I admire his attention to detail and craft. Beautiful. Inspiring.

Thank you!

Hi, it’s very beautiful app and very nice write-up. I am a solo developer too with attitude to the quality of apps very similar to yours and in my case it is a file manager for Mac OS. The file manager is written in objective-c as well and was gradually developed for some years already. It is very lightweight and I am using it daily as working horse to test and monitor it’s quality. It is at polishing stage now and when I am thinking about certain integration with text editor I believe it should be nothing less than something like you’ve made. Your attention to details and quality of user experience is facilitating and very resonate with with my approach to my app. I was not thinking about something particular at the moment but I thought may be there is an opportunity for us to cooperate in some form at some point and be generally in touch perhaps.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#144

Post by papereditor »

Terretta wrote: post #131
papereditor wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay for the lifetime license, and it will do exactly that.

This is a great writeup. Enjoyed even the transparency on pricing thinking, but one price that doesn't seem to have been experimented with is allowing a one time purchase that is not an in-app purchase. In-app purchases make your app unavailable to company employees where the company manages the Apple device using MDM and purchases software using e.g. Apple Business Manager or the older volume purchasing. The $99 opt…

Thank you for the suggestion!

I've always avoided non-App Store distribution to keep things simpler. It's a nightmare to manage many different licensing schemes.

Now I don't have to have any backend. Everything is done via the built-in, robust App Store mechanism that just works.

I hope Apple will figure something out in the future. And I think they will since they want to increase their "Services" revenue as hardware sales decline. Making stuff easier for business customers seems like a low-hanging fruit.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#145

Post by lapcat »

jshier wrote: post #140
lapcat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It continues to grow, and it's a rewrite, so it certainly proves your assertion wrong. Which assertion was wrong? I was paraphrasing from the project page itself: "It is in its early stages with many features still to be implemented." https://github.com/apple/swift-foundation

> Which assertion was wrong? Your original assertion that Apple wasn't rewriting anything.

> Your original assertion that Apple wasn't rewriting anything.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I made no such assertion.

Perhaps you're confusing me and "toyg"?

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#146

Post by shermantanktop »

KMnO4 wrote: post #47
Alifatisk wrote: post #6

> To my surprise, the Swift one had the full Swift runtime embedded into it — about 5MB, while the Objective-C one was super light — tens or maybe 100KB in total. That's a huge difference, but I believe it's because Swift is meant to be somewhat cross-platform, right?

That experiment was done in 2015, when the Swift runtime had to be included. If you build an app now, it will link to the system runtime and be close to 100kb as well. This seems to be premature optimization. The author forced himself to learn archaic Objective C for a completely unnecessary reason, and now is stuck with that design choice despite not having any benefits.

And yet here they are, with a great app, some amount of sustained revenue, and a front page post on HN. Is that an accident?

The word that comes to mind after reading that post is “intentionality.” Many deliberate decisions, including for hard tradeoffs like this one. To me, that speaks to the importance of vision and judgment over the apparent correctness of individual choices.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#147

Post by throwaway2037 »

monkeynotes wrote: post #45

All the "fringes" stuff is where the magic is. The author suggests that no one notices some of the refinements, well this may be true on day one, but people discover these touches as they grow more familiar. Those subtle thoughtful additions are what makes the difference between an app I like using, and one I love using. They help me feel a couple of things: 1) A connection; I feel like I noticed something just for t…

Not to steal your thunder about a MacOS-specific text editor, I would say that many Windows devs would say the same about Notepad++ and Sublime Text. While I am not a Windows fanboi, when I am forced to use that platform, I am always searching the Start Menu to run those text editors! I agree: The "TLC" (tender, loving, care) is well transmitted to users over the long run. The endless number of "hacker-friendly" features slowly builds a rabid fanbase.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#148

Post by Eric_WVGG »

jshier wrote: post #85
toyg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be real: Apple is not going to rewrite MacOs/iOs in Swift. Objective-C will always be there, offering faster and more robust features. Just look at the Microsoft equivalent: yes, C# is good and all, but the hardcore Windows apps are still using (lightly-skinned) VC++ APIs - after almost 25 years since they started flogging .NET. Swift is for the new rubes, bootcamp graduates and so on.

They're literally rewriting in Swift right now. Foundation is being rewritten entirely in Swift. All new code is in Swift. All new frameworks are Swift-only. They're using Swift from low level firmware on the Secure Enclave to apps. This is already real.

This is turning into a silly argument… but anyway there's a blogger who has been tracking the number of binaries written in the various languages (and appkit vs catalyst vs swiftui etc.) for years.

Sonoma is 13% Swift (up from 11% in Ventura), 53% Obj-C (down from 55% in Ventura). The priority actually appears to be eating away from the C/C++ parts of the codebase (currently 33%, down from 42% just two releases ago).

https://blog.timac.org/2023/1128-state-of-appkit-catalyst-sw...

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#150

Post by papereditor »

lovelyviking wrote: post #143
papereditor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you!

Hi, it’s very beautiful app and very nice write-up. I am a solo developer too with attitude to the quality of apps very similar to yours and in my case it is a file manager for Mac OS. The file manager is written in objective-c as well and was gradually developed for some years already. It is very lightweight and I am using it daily as working horse to test and monitor it’s quality. It is at polishing stage now and w…

Sure. If I can assist in some way - I will. DM me on Twitter.
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