iOS Apprentice, Eighth Edition, written by me, Eli Ganim, and Matthijs Hollemans.
Years ago, I used to joke that if I ever wrote a book, I’d know that it was well-received if it ever got pirated. I’d forgotten about that joke until today. I was Googling for an image of the cover of the book I co-wrote — iOS Apprentice, Eighth Edition (and the first edition to cover SwiftUI) — when I found it available for download on a pirate ebook, er, I mean extralegal evaluation site! I’ve made it as an author — the free-as-in-piracy market has declared it so!
It would be a violation of my agreement with the publisher (and also in very poor taste) to link to the site, so I’ve simply posted a screenshot of the page that features the book.
Here’s what their summary says. They seem to like it:
If you’re new to Swift or programming in general, learning how to write apps can seem like an incredibly difficult task. In that case, you may need this book. It is divided into five parts, each of which describes a separate project. By the end of the book, you will have enough information to be able to implement your ideas in code.
Dignity:
➕ Absence of errors and typos; ➕ Quality Exercises.
Weaknesses:
➖ Not Noticed.
The book has been liked by 58 registered users and shared by 74 registered users on the pirate site. I’m left wondering who registers on a pirate site that doesn’t require registration to download.
The payment model at RayWenderlich.com (the publisher’s name at the time; they’re now Kodeco) isn’t royalty-based, and the edition is pretty out of date now, so I’m not mad at all. In fact, I’m pleased — it means my work was good enough that people wanted to pirate it!
The article demonstrates the most basic use of the Auth0.swift SDK, the Auth0 SDK for all Apple platforms — not just iOS, but macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It’s Auth0’s third most-used SDKs, accounting for more than one in ten API requests to Auth0 systems!
It’s a two-part tutorial. Part 1 of the tutorial starts with File → New Project…, adds some basic interactivity, adds the Auth0.swift package, walks you through setup on the Auth0 side, and finally enables login and logout:
The app’s “logged out” screen.
Auth0’s Universal Login.
The app’s “logged in” screen.
Part 2 of the tutorial takes your basic login/logout app and gives it the ability to read user information from the user profile and display it onscreen:
Kotlin developers who want to get into data science: these articles are for you! They’re about using Jupyter Notebook, but with Kotlin instead of Python. Why should Pythonistas make all the big bucks?
Read the articles, which appear on RayWenderlich.com (the premier mobile development site, and it’s where I learned iOS and Android dev) in this order:
Beginning Data Science with Jupyter Notebook and Kotlin: Once you’re familiar with krangl, it’s time to get familiar with data frames and working with datasets. This article will help you get started by exploring real data, crunching it, and even getting some insights from it.
If you have doubts about cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and web3 in general and need some more convincing, you might find these arguments helpful. If you’re a true believer, these are the arguments you’ll have to counter. Either way, enjoy!
The “You’ll be running with a crowd of terrible human beings” argument
Tap to view the original tweet
The article Bitcoin Goes to War in The New Republic has a subtitle that explains its thesis a little better: “For some crypto holders, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an opportunity—and a validation of their increasingly radical beliefs.”
However, I feel that the best summary comes from a sentence in the middle of the article, which reads “For some right-wing libertarian-minded coiners, the right to freely trade crypto takes precedence over opposing a Russian invasion of a sovereign nation.”
Nothing drives this point home better than investor Mike Alfred’s Twitter response to Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, who asked:
He points out that the blockchain data structure isn’t anything revolutionary, but instead is based on decades-old, well-documented structures: hash chains and hash trees (a.k.a. Merkle trees):
He also talks about the excuses that crypto-fans make for its massive power consumption…
…how easy it is to steal or grift from other people…
…that it just created a new business model for VCs…
If you (or someone you know) has heard of cryptocurrency and NFTs but doesn’t know much about them or why they’re getting a lot of hype, Dan Olson’s Line Goes Up — The Problem with NFTs explains everything quite well.
Don’t let the 2-hour 18-minute runtime scare you off — it’s broken into chapters and presents its material so well that you won’t even notice the time passing.
02:13:21 13. I Know It’s Rigged, But It’s The Only Game In Town
The artsy English-accented argument
English Youtuber and musician Georgina “munecat” Taylor does a wonderful takedown of the entire Web 3.0 scene, and while the video clock in at over an hour and forty minutes, it’s a very entertaining and informative watch.
The “Fucked Company” argument
If you were around during the dot-com bubble’s burst, you might remember a website called Fucked Company (whose name s a parody of Fast Company) that chronicled the ongoing failures of dot-coms with maximum snark.
There’s now a Web3 version: Web3 is going just great, and it’s part of my daily cautionary reading. Check it out.
Once again, it’s September 13th — the 256th day of the year (on non-leap years)! As the number of values that can be expressed in a single byte, 256 means something to programmers, and as the largest power of 2 that will fit into 365, the 256th day of the year is a perfect excuse to declare it as Day of the Programmer.
Here are some things that you might find useful on this special day…
There’s Humble Bundle’s Python Superpowers bundle, which provides a lot of goodies for $25, including some really good Python video courses, ebooks, and a 6-month free license of PyCharm Professional Edition!
I stumbled across the headline I really hate the Medium experience, which resonated with me because — well, I really hate the Medium experience. When I tried to follow the link to read the article, I was presented with this:
Tap the image to view the terribleness at full size.
And that perfectly (and self-referentially too!) sums up the Medium experience.
If you’re writing developer articles, don’t write on Medium.
It won’t grow your audience or your reputation, the knowledge you’re trying to share will remain hidden as developers look elsewhere for answers, and you won’t be in control of your own content. Medium promises monetization, but speaking as someone who used to be able to pay the rent on Adsense revenues, articles don’t monetize that well anymore, and Medium pays worse.
Get a domain, set up whatever publishing system works for you, and post your articles there.
![iOS Simulator screen shot: Screen with title “Logged in”, photo of user, user]s name and email address, and “Log out” button.](https://www.globalnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/logged-in-2.jpg)
