Today’s edition of Things I Learned Last Week is two-fold: one in things that I actually did learn, the other what I realized but wish wasn’t the case. So, on with the show.
You get what you get
So I’m on a journey to become an expert in SwiftUI as much as possible. Having worked mostly on older code bases recently there wasn’t space to introduce SwiftUI in any meaningful way.
For those who may not know, SwiftUI is Apple’s new hotness for how to write multiplatform UI code in a declarative way. What that means is that instead of telling the system you want a table, how high each row should be, etc, you just tell the system you want a list and give it the contents of the row. You don’t have to worry about reuse, height estimation, or anything of that sort. Which is great, until it isn’t.
I have done alot of work over the years with maps - both MapKit and Mapbox. So naturally I set out trying to create an app with SwiftUI that puts things on a map in a creative and useful way(I’m being deliberately vague so I can introduce the app directly at some point). Part of the work was to animate a point on the map when it gets added.
This is straightforward in UIKit, but is proving to be near impossible in SwiftUI if not outright impossible. This could be the result of my inexperience, but I’m on day 2 of beating up on it with no avail. I’m going to keep at it while working on other pieces but it’s not looking very promising. Maybe a combo SwiftUI/UIKit situation will work here.
So the moral of the story is not to complain. The moral of the story is that when you surrender control to the system simply things are simple but harder or custom things may become out of reach. Time will tell.
What is it about Fridays and Mondays?
I almost wonder if there is an automated process in ATS systems to flush the queue on Fridays and Mondays. My three rejections of the week - one came on Monday and two today. And that pattern has held recently. Is it that someone clears out their queue and want to get rid of those of us leftover, or is this an automated thing? Who knows, but it’s not a fun way to finish the week….
Next week’s goals
Learn better things so I can put them here. :)
Create a miniature road map for my app so I can make progress.
Finish out the Star Trek themed candidate rejection song in my head.
Have a good weekend!