Work habits

Playgrounds…they aren’t just for kids

Posted on by manitobaninja

When Apple announced Swift back in the summer of ’14 they also made quite the fuss about Xcode’s new playground feature. This was going to be a live coding environment where you could work through simple expressions and functions and see the results in real-time. It was charming, and you could see this being a great tool for beginners, but I had a hard time seeing how a developer working on a project would gain much value from it.

Fast forward a year and a half later and now I get it. Today I find myself using playgrounds in my projects, not just for testing out quick little code blocks, but for organizing and keeping a detailed reference of code and other assets relevant to the project. It can actually be a valuable tool for managing your work and being more efficient!

Because playgrounds don’t get much attention I wanted to put together a quick post that highlighted as many of the best resources that I could find to help beginners, and people of all levels for that matter, get an idea of what playgrounds can do. I end the article with some examples of how I have starting using playgrounds in my own workflow, hopefully sparking some people to think about how playgrounds could work for them. It is not a big time investment so this is an ideal subject for a quiet weekend, or over the course of a few evenings. Read More

Okay, now I understand why the cloud is so great!

Posted on by manitobaninja

At around 3:15pm, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I was working away on my 6 year old MacBook Pro, doing some coding and enjoying a coffee. Despite its age it was still working alright. It was a bit slow at times, and it had some weird quirks lately, and the battery was all but done so I had to keep it plugged in all the time. But other then that it was a machine that had served me well, and would continue to do so until at least next fall, I had hoped.

And then as I was working away in Xcode it shut off on me. My mind went to the usual suspects; maybe the charger wasn’t connected properly and the battery had been drained. Maybe the power went off in my apartment. Maybe the charger itself had just died. After a few minutes I realized that it was probably something serious. So at 3:20pm I tossed my laptop and gear and into my messenger bag and quickly drove to the Apple Store to get someone to look at it before they closed their doors in just under 1 hour and 40 minutes time.

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Take a break, set up your workspace, and then get back to work?

Posted on by manitobaninja

If you are not comfortable you will not be productive. Simple as that. With all the time you are going to spend sitting in front of your computer having the right work-space is key.

I do not need to go into great detail about what works and what doesn’t. What works is whatever you find to be comfortable, reduces your distractions, and lets you work in an efficient way. You can see my set-up above. Its small, compact, and simple. For me that is ideal and just what I need. But maybe you want a big sprawling desk and large chair and all kinds of other crazy things. It is your space so you decide. But the key thing is to figure out what works for you sooner rather than later so that your time isn’t needlessly wasted in an inefficient set-up. It seems obvious but it is something that is easily over looked so really give it some thought (but not too much thought since, again, this isn’t a particularly complicated problem to sort out). Read More