The thing I hate-enjoy the most about making Apple Shortcuts is how it encourages (because it lacks real complex logic or data structures) to write logic that takes shortcuts and kind of avoids checking all cases. Like with what I was doing when I got this post idea:

• Two variables (a and b) that can have three states: Green, Yellow, Red.
• Where the global state should be Red if either is Red, or Yellow if either is Yellow otherwise Green
• Easy with a or something more fancy like a data structure that holds the results for each possible state
• With Shortcuts I always find myself doing something like this

1. Set Status to A
2. Then a shit load of nested if
3. If Status != Red
4. If B != A
5. If B != Green

In the same way you would in places where performance is very important and you only do what you have to do.

I could have re-written it to be numbers and found the largest ones, and then converted that to the statuses. But that isn’t really the point here: can we have some real if logic soon?!

I have had the “pleasure” of experiencing a lot of these solutions over the years. And I guess an important thing to keep in mind is that these tools probably isn’t that fair to compare with the kind of development I typically do. Either because of staffing, money or other reasons.

But from a user side of things I always find them incredibly slow with a user experience that leaves A LOT to be desired. While on the development side it is also slow to set them up, with surprising little of the easy duplication and re-use you see in conventional software development and also the apps are very slow and cumbersome in themselves.

Again, I’m most likely not the target audience.

It is really important to understand how you work when you try to manage yourself, set goals, improve things etc.

Some people are need to pretend like everything is fun, I just focus more on why I am doing it.

I keep track of all the data and have lists from milestones and all of that to drive most of what I do. Hide most of it, and just have what I am working on now in front of me. And typically don’t care too much of what I have done and just have moved on to new goals as I’m reaching the old ones.

Other people want to celebrate things more.

It is kind of like the different kind of people at the gym. I just go alone and do it every day because I want to be stronger, fitter etc. Others have a friend they go with, use personal trainers or go to a class etc. It all depends on your drive.

To understand how to manipulate (or “motivate” if you do a corporate training thingy) yourself is essential to move forward

Many apps have some onboarding process to make it easier for newer users to get started.

Please.

Let me have a way to avoid having to run through it every time I install your app on a new device.

Either by properly detecting when users have gone through it before and letting me log-in before completing it. And ideally let me skip it and re-visit it whenever I want to.

If you make an app, and provide some sample data as the onboarding process, give me the option to keep it or not, so I don’t have to spend a bunch of time deleting stuff.

I’m the kind of weirdo ADHD person that need to schedule everything for it to even a possibility for it to happen.

Including “fun” things like watching shows or playing games.

A big part of being a software developer, and especially a consultant, is to learn new languages and frameworks as things change.

If you are the kind that like to go to a formal course or like me who prefer to more learn by doing and reading, the big challenge, if you don’t have a work assignment related to it yet, it can be a challenge to get familiar with the new language after you know the basics.

I’ve become a huge fan of using the various sets of Advent of Code tasks to learn new languages. Some are easy, others really hard, and I always find myself really getting to know each languages strengths and what the literal fuck’s by doing them.

Why isn’t there like a version of the medium sized iOS widget just flipped 90 degrees?

Some places, especially in widgets, you can choose to show everything or filter out all day events. Why the fuck can’t I tell it to show only all day events?!