9 years of Apple text editor solo dev • Hacker News Board

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#201

Post by gwbennett » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

Having been developing iOS apps since 2009, hard to believe 15 years, this is one of the finest writeups from a developer I've seen. Congrats on your hard work and the decisions you made developing your app. You made some great decisions, i.e., sticking to native development, no 3rd party dependencies, and sticking with Obj-C.

I made the move to Swift when it came out. However, there are many times I miss Obj-C and many of the advantages you mentioned. I often wonder what Obj-C would look like today if Apple had put the time and effort into it instead of Swift.

I was not aware of your app. I just downloaded it on my Mac and iPhone. It is really nice! I like the little things you have done, like the hints on the menu bars for using the Option key, and the hint disappearing when you do. I am going to continue to use it.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Best of luck!

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#202

Post by araes » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

I cannot have read that correct. For people on the Apple Dev ecosystem, do you really have no access to SDK code as a reference? Not even some high level abstraction version? I got to that assembly code part and just sat there and re-read it again and again. "You've got to go straight to assembly mode?" I cannot have read that correct.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#203

Post by papereditor » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #190

One of the really nice things about the Apple platform is you can still build and sell apps for it. Windows and especially Linux are encrusted with freeloaders, but Apple users are willing to open their wallets for software with that extra bit of care put into it.

True!

It's remarkable that even today, with millions of apps, you can still find paying customers through the App Store even if you are a nobody.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#204

Post by mtillman » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

brantonb wrote: post #199

This post was great, so I added the RSS feed to my reader and I almost instantly removed it. I always knew those "7 Best Writing Apps for iPhone (2024)" posts were only there for SEO, but seeing a post from 2021 with that title is frustrating. This post appears to be the only non-SEO-related post in the feed. Not trying to take anything away from the author: the app and this post look great. But consider doing more w…

There is no money in doing what you're suggesting. You're basically asking for a donation.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#205

Post by papereditor » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

gwbennett wrote: post #201

Having been developing iOS apps since 2009, hard to believe 15 years, this is one of the finest writeups from a developer I've seen. Congrats on your hard work and the decisions you made developing your app. You made some great decisions, i.e., sticking to native development, no 3rd party dependencies, and sticking with Obj-C. I made the move to Swift when it came out. However, there are many times I miss Obj-C and m…

Thank you for the high praise!

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#206

Post by criddell » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

ninepoints wrote: post #197

jwells89 wrote: post #170

The ability to go low/no-dependencies, as mentioned in the blog post, is one of my favorite things about Apple platforms. It’s not just possible but practical to build a capable, highly polished app without bringing in anything third-party thanks to the richness and depth of AppKit/UIKit. Few frameworks can compete, with even other juggernauts like Qt coming up short in comparison.

I don't really understand this take. Appkit/Uikit _is_ the dependency.

It's not a third party dependency.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#207

Post by interactivecode » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #158

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #94

> Swift has come a long way and my guess is Apple has either embedded it into their platforms or added some fancy tree shaking for the binary. It went ABI around Swift 5 or so. I took a huge leap of faith, in 2014, and started using Swift, exclusively. It's turned out OK. I'm not quite as positive about SwiftUI, though. I think it will work out, but it has a huge amount of catching up to do, if it is to replace UIKit…

When I tried using SwiftUI, the performance for scrolling through lists past a certain size was very painful. I guess there were ways to mitigate this slowness, but they were very unintuitive and did not give me confidence in the developers commitment to keeping apps snappy and responsive. The APIs for NSTableView and NSCollectionView, in contrast, were always very responsive and performant when used in the default w…

The great strength of SwiftUI is that until they have caught up with UIKit and AppKit you can just drop down to those frameworks. So you can use SwiftUI in 95% of your app and where you run into limitions you can use the lowerlevel NSCollectionView for example. Whats even cooler is that inside that NSCollectionView you can just use SwiftUI views again.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#208

Post by meerita » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:44 PM UTC

I am still using IA/Writer in my Mac. I wrote 3 books with it. The only thing I dislike most in the the absurd pricing on the iOS app.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#209

Post by ilrwbwrkhv » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

First of all this is amazing. Amazing app, amazing dev, amazing story. Everything that the hacker culture stands for, is flourishing in your app. My question is do you make enough to live off apps like these? I really hope so, because these are some of the best tech products in the world and I would love to see more of these.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#210

Post by lapcat » Fri, Jan 05, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

jshier wrote: post #165

lapcat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

Ah true. Not sure why you replied then. Your point about Foundation was meaningless and the others just nits. Do you have an actual point to make?

> Your point about Foundation was meaningless and the others just nits. Do you have an actual point to make?

My point, as always, is the truth. You said two false things, which you subsequently admitted were hyperbole. Truth is valuable in itself, and more important than "points", i.e., arguments or motives.

If I were to make a point, though, it's that Objective-C still has a very long life ahead of it, and its complete replacement, if that ever occurs, will be an arduous process, given the amount of extant Objective-C code in the operating systems and first-party apps (not to mention third-party apps). It's not just Objective-C either: C++ is also used quite a bit in the OS. Think of WebKit, for example.