→ React Native at Picnic 🔗
We're building the latest addition to our app portfolio at Picnic with React Native. Together with Suhaib Khan and Lucas Twisk, I wrote about our experiences so far on the Picnic Tech blog.
→ Blogpost on Localicious 🔗
Over on the Picnic Tech Blog, my colleaugue Ron Mulder shares some insights into how we cope with localisation and internationalisation of our mobile apps at Picnic.
The post is mostly about our process, but also contains a sneak preview of localicious, the tool we built and will open source in the near future.
→ An Oral History of Apple's Infinite Loop 🔗
Steven Levy published a great article for Wired in which he gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Apple through quotes by a few key people at high ranks in the organisation.
There is a lot of good stuff in the article, but what stood out to me as I read it were the following quotes; in a section about life at Apple after Steve Jobs took over as CEO:
Chris Espinosa: One of the first things Steve did was to put giant “Think Different” banners in the huge atrium in IL1, which seemed a little propaganda-ish, but they were a hit with everybody. Cheryl Thomas: The “Think Different” campaign was a huge, huge deal for us because it was this redefinition of who we were and how we thought.
The campaign has won a lot of critical acclaim, is widely known among consumers and certainly helped positioning the Apple brand as something special. Reading this, though, I can't help but conclude that it was as much targeted towards the people inside Apple in an attempt to reinject some of that old, magical culture that gave us the original Macintosh.
And it worked. That same company, freed from it's corporate chains, ended up creating many more great products. One of them, of course, the iPod:
Cheryl Thomas: The first time I ever saw someone outside a lab carrying an iPod was Steve, right after the announcement. He was walking, iPod in hand, be-bopping across the quad. He had the hugest smile on his face.
What a beautiful scene that must have been to see for the people that worked so hard on it.
→ The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything 🔗
From the excellent Farnam Street blog:
The famous Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman understood the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something and it’s one of the most important reasons for his success. In fact, he created a formula for learning that ensured he understood something better than everyone else.
The formula is simple. First you write down what you know about a subject as if you are teaching it to a child. You'll inevitably find gaps in your knowledge, at which point you'll have to go back to the source material until you can explain the whole subject.
To really internalize the knowledge, you then rewrite your notes into a naturally flowing story. Your ability to do that is an indicator of your mastery of the subject.
→ The New York Times on Pinterest 🔗
An interesting profile of Pinterest in The New York Times, detailing the ways in which the company is different from other tech companies.
This (paraphrased) quote by Ben Silbermann, their CEO, stood out to me:
If Pinterest addresses the needs and desires of its users, he said, “the business will take care of itself.”
I believe that to be a stance that is required for creating great products.
→ Blogpost on YAML Schema 🔗
At Picnic, we often use JSON or YAML files to manage the configuration of parts of our services. This approach enables employees with a non-engineering background to configure the essential properties for how our systems work. However, mistakes in such files are easily made.
I explain how to overcome these mistakes over on the Picnic Tech Blog.
→ Mobile software, it's getting personal 🔗
For the Picnic Tech Blog, I wrote down my thoughts on software getting more and more personal as a result of the mobile revolution of the past decade.
→ Pattern Matching in Swift 🔗
A great breakdown of the use-cases for pattern matching in Swift. Also see part 2 on ranges and intervals and part 3 with more examples.
→ Mechanics of good pairing 🔗
A great post on how to set up pair programming environments effectively.
→ If a tree falls 🔗
If an idea comes to you and you don't tell anyone, it's not that we doubt you had that thought, it's that that thought doesn't get a chance to breathe and grow and be improved.
An idea gets better when you give it away. It improves when you tell it to someone. It improves when they push back on it.