An App Can Be a Home-Cooked Meal
Metadata
Highlights
- I distributed the app to my family using TestFlight, and in TestFlight it shall remain forever: a cozy, eternal beta.
- In a better world, I would have built this in a day using some kind of modern, flexible HyperCard for iOS, exporting a sturdy, standalone app that did exactly what I wanted and nothing else.
In our actual world, I built it in about a week, and roughly half of that time was spent wrestling with different flavors of code-signing and identity provisioning and I don’t even know what. I waved some incense and threw some stones and the gods of Xcode allowed me to pass.
- Our actual world isn’t totally broken. I do not take for granted, not for one millisecond, the open source components and sample code that made this project possible. In the 21st century, as long as you’re operating within the bounds of the state of the art, programming can feel delightfully Lego-like. All you have to do is rake your fingers through the bin.
- This app is Entirely Itself — not a framework, not a sample app.
- I am the programming equivalent of a home cook. ^41a07b
- But let’s substitute a different phrase: “learn to cook.” People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But many more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably. Or because they want to carry on a tradition. Sometimes they learn just because they’re bored! Or even because — get this — they love spending time with the person who’s teaching them. ^f906c6
- This feels natural; anyone who has ever, like … eaten a meal … of any kind … recognizes that cooking is totally tangled up with domesticity and curiosity, health and love.
- What is this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty?
Is it simply … the feeling of being home?
An App Can Be a Home-Cooked Meal
Metadata
Highlights
- I distributed the app to my family using TestFlight, and in TestFlight it shall remain forever: a cozy, eternal beta.
- In a better world, I would have built this in a day using some kind of modern, flexible HyperCard for iOS, exporting a sturdy, standalone app that did exactly what I wanted and nothing else.
In our actual world, I built it in about a week, and roughly half of that time was spent wrestling with different flavors of code-signing and identity provisioning and I don’t even know what. I waved some incense and threw some stones and the gods of Xcode allowed me to pass.
- Our actual world isn’t totally broken. I do not take for granted, not for one millisecond, the open source components and sample code that made this project possible. In the 21st century, as long as you’re operating within the bounds of the state of the art, programming can feel delightfully Lego-like. All you have to do is rake your fingers through the bin.
- This app is Entirely Itself — not a framework, not a sample app.
- I am the programming equivalent of a home cook.
- But let’s substitute a different phrase: “learn to cook.” People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But many more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably. Or because they want to carry on a tradition. Sometimes they learn just because they’re bored! Or even because — get this — they love spending time with the person who’s teaching them.
- This feels natural; anyone who has ever, like … eaten a meal … of any kind … recognizes that cooking is totally tangled up with domesticity and curiosity, health and love.
- What is this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty?
Is it simply … the feeling of being home?