Edge Cases

Everybody's Got a Bad Parser

Andrew on Carthage and Wolf on text as a symptom. Plus: ending the show.

Links:

• I Do Care a Lot About Dependencies « Edge Cases
• CocoaPods.org
• 098 iPS Carthage with Justin Spahr-Summers - iPhreaks « DevChat.tv
• Carthage/Carthage « GitHub
• mattt comment re: AFNetworking never supporting dynamic frameworks, AFNetworking/AFNetworking « GitHub
• A Foundation of Chaos « Edge Cases
• Unix philosophy, Doug McIlroy « Wikipedia
• The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman « Amazon.com
• Affordance « Wikipedia
• Monodraw for Mac « Helftone
• Old Macintosh Startup Sounds And Crash Sounds « YouTube

A Foundation of Chaos

Wolf on strict vs flexible foundations and Andrew on React Native.

Links:

• A Fan of Ravioli Code « Edge Cases
• Writing Solid Code (Microsoft Programming Series), by Steve Maguire « Amazon.com
• Robustness principle « Wikipedia
• Postel’s Law is not for you « Trevor Jim
• The Robustness Principle Reconsidered, by Eric Allman « Communications of the ACM
• Stochasticity « Radiolab
• Expressing Our Individuality, the Way E. Coli Do « New York Times
• Chaos Monkey · Netflix/SimianArmy Wiki « GitHub
• facebook/react-native « GitHub
• Old Apple Meets New Apple « Edge Cases
• ReactiveCocoa
• Why React? « React
• Write once, run anywhere « Wikipedia

Out-Microsofting Microsoft

Andrew on how Apple is the new Microsoft and Wolf on real-time systems.

Links:

• Rob Rix tweet: “@apontious Rust 0.4 was much better than Swift 1.0, mostly due to openness.”
• Inside Apple’s Broken Sapphire Factory « Wall Street Journal
• Phone Company Sketch - We Don’t Care - Tomlin « YouTube
• The Apple strategy tax « Ars Technica
• Alien Reference Counting « Edge Cases
• Greg Parker (@gparker) « Twitter
• Race the Beam « Edge Cases

Gradient of Information

Wolf on the why of software change and Andrew on GUI debugging tools, real and imagined.

Links:

• Kyle Van Essen tweet: “One failing of our discipline is that it’s easier to write code from scratch than to understand existing code. We need tools that explain.”
• 5 Whys « Wikipedia
• 5 Useful Tips For A Better Commit Message « Giant Robots
• A Note About Git Commit Messages « tbaggery
• How to Write a Git Commit Message « Chris Beams
• commandline/flashbake « GitHub
• WWDC 2014 Session 413 Debugging in Xcode 6

Old Apple Meets New Apple

Andrew on Apple’s Swift framework problem and Wolf on bitcode for software distribution.

Links:

• Swift 1.2 and Xcode 6.3 beta « Swift Blog - Apple Developer
• Controlling Complexity in Swift by Andy Matuschak (Video) « Realm
• WWDC 2014 Session 229 Advanced iOS Application Architecture and Patterns
• Dynamic recompilation « Wikipedia
• QuickTransit « Wikipedia
• Binary translation « Wikipedia
• FX!32 « Wikipedia
• p-code machine « Wikipedia
• SWEET16 « Wikipedia
• Ahead-of-time compilation « Wikipedia
• Bytecode « Wikipedia
• LLVM Bitcode File Format — LLVM 3.7 documentation
• Indexing with Clang « Edge Cases
• Integrating with LLVM « Dylan Foundry
• Google Native Client « Wikipedia
• Don’t Get Cocky, Kid « Edge Cases
• Sequential Consistency « Edge Cases

What’s the Deal with NSInteger?

Wolf on branches vs feature flags and Andrew (belatedly) on Apple’s 64-bit transition.

Links:

• Scripting with C « Edge Cases
• OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review, Swift « Ars Technica
• Swift Standard Library Reference: Numeric Types
• Avi Bryant tweet: “@jewelia the thing I miss from Etsy is that discouraging branches serves as a huge encouragement to use feature flags, which is a good thing”
• Sentiment analysis « Wikipedia
• etsy/feature « GitHub
• Twitter captivated by Arizona llama drama « BBC News
• The White and Gold (No, Blue and Black!) Dress That Melted the Internet « NYTimes.com

Working on the Other Side of the Country

Andrew and Wolf on working from home.

Links:

• Yahoo Working From Home Memo « Business Insider
• Mapping the Microbes of the New York City Subway « Wired
• BART rider with measles potentially exposed thousands « SFGate
• Pear Note for Mac « Useful Fruit Software

The Official Container Type of the Edge Cases Podcast

Wolf on subpixel text rendering and Andrew on linked lists.

Links:

• Subpixel Anti-Aliasing Follow-Up « Quarter Life Crisis
• Subpixel rendering « Wikipedia
• Sub-pixel font smoothing with CGBitmapContext « Cocoabuilder
• How to work around poor text rendering in text backed by a CALayer « Stack Overflow
• twui/TUICGAdditions.m at master « GitHub
• Color-aware ClearType requires access to fixed background pixels, which is a problem if you don’t know what the background pixels are, or if they aren’t fixed « The Old New Thing
• Andrew Pontious tweet: “Guys guys I think I might actually have a legitimate use for a linked list guys.”
• Andrew Pontious tweet: “I’m implementing the linked list! Don’t try and stop me!”
• Andrew Pontious tweet: “Man, so that’s why nobody uses linked lists!”
• Linked list « Wikipedia
• Intrusive and non-intrusive containers - 1.43.0 « Boost C++ Libraries
• Finding loop in a singly linked-list « Stack Overflow
• rentzsch/elemental « GitHub
• rentzsch/atomicity « GitHub

Don't Copy That Floppy

Andrew on weak references and Wolf on physical-access malware like Thunderstrike.

Links:

• The Swift Programming Language: Automatic Reference Counting
• Thunderstrike 31c3 « Trammell Hudson’s Projects
• Thunderstrike Proof-of-Concept Attack Serious, but Limited « TidBITS
• World’s first (known) bootkit for OS X can permanently backdoor Macs « Ars Technica
• De Mysteriis Dom Jobsivs: Mac EFI Rootkits (PDF)
• DMA attack « Wikipedia
• The MacHax Best Hack Contest 2002 « TidBITS
• Evil Maid goes after TrueCrypt! « The Invisible Things Lab’s blog
• You Don’t Want XTS « Quarrelsome
• Secret of Intel Management Engine by Igor Skochinsky « Slideshare
• Cold boot attack « Wikipedia
• FROST: Forensic Recovery Of Scrambled Telephones « IT-Sicherheitsinfrastrukturen (Informatik 1)
• Evidence Search and Analysis Software for Digital Forensic Investigations « Belkasoft
• Memory controller, Scrambling « Wikipedia
• Apple keyboard firmware hack demonstrated « SemiAccurate

Enough Flags to Be a United Nations

Wolf on state machines and Andrew on std::swap vs. functional programming.

Links:

• Finite States of America « Khanlou.com
• Finite-state machine « Wikipedia
• Why Developers Never Use State Machines « Skorks
• SMC: The State Machine Compiler
• blakewatters/TransitionKit « GitHub
• luisobo/StateMachine « GitHub
• mmower/statec « GitHub
• rentzsch/JREnum « GitHub
• Sutter’s Mill | Herb Sutter on software, hardware, and concurrency
• Scott Meyers: Software Development Consultant
• Exception-Safe Class Design, Part 1: Copy Assignment « GotW (Guru of the Week) #59
• If You Look at the Error, You Will Crash « Edge Cases

Don't Get Cocky, Kid

Andrew on code comment-based documentation and Wolf on future-proof data formats.

Links:

• Don’t Get Cocky « YouTube
• Documentation « NSHipster
• appledoc « Gentle Bytes
• HeaderDoc « Wikipedia
• HeaderDoc User Guide
• Documenting in Xcode with HeaderDoc Tutorial « Ray Wenderlich
• Doxygen « Wikipedia
• Swift Documentation « NSHipster
• EnbiggenEventQueue Home Page « Red Shed Software via Wayback Machine
• Re: Carbon Dev-CarbonLib on March 24? (Eric Schlegel on PowerPC WDEFs) « carbon-development

Something Was Not Going Right

Wolf on events vs threads and Andrew on our Overcast feed issues.

Links:

• Accidental Tech Podcast: 97: You Have to Know When to Stop « atp.fm
• felixge/node-mysql, Streaming query rows « GitHub
• A New Streaming API for Node v0.10 « Node.js Blog
• the morning paper: an interesting/influential/important paper from the world of CS every weekday morning, as selected by Adrian Colyer
• Why threads are a bad idea « the morning paper
• Threads Are Interesting « Edge Cases
• Why events are a bad idea « the morning paper
• Conflict-free Replicated Data Types « Edge Cases
• On the duality of operating system structures « the morning paper
• A language-based approach to unifying events and threads « the morning paper
• Scala Actors: Unifying thread-based and event-based programming « the morning paper
• Akka
• Weaving the Leopard’s Pelt: Simulating Fibers on OS X, by Andrew Pontious via Wayback Machine (PDF)
• Edge Cases tweet: “For users of Overcast, type or paste this in as a workaround for a properly-working Edge Cases feed: http://edgecasesshow.com/rss_overcast.xml”
• Overcast
• Overcast tweet: “Overcast has just surpassed 200,000 users in less than 6 months. Thank you all very much. I’ll keep working on making it even better.”
• Playing Jenga with Microsoft Word « Edge Cases
• Edge Cases feed « Overcast

Lingual Advancement

Andrew on Xcode 6’s unit testing improvements and Wolf on his lingual crisis of faith.

Links:

• Slobbering over Xcode 5 Auto Layout « Edge Cases
• WWDC 2014 Session 414 Testing in Xcode 6
• Cédric Luthi tweet: “Are you using the new asynchronous testing API of XCTest? You probably want to read this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27555499/xctestexpectation-how-to-avoid-calling-the-fulfill-method-after-the-wait-contex/27555500#27555500”
• xctest - XCTestExpectation: how to avoid calling the fulfill method after the wait context has ended? « Stack Overflow
• Playing Jenga with Microsoft Word « Edge Cases
• Pidgin « Wikipedia
• Esperanto « Wikipedia

Light on Theory

Wolf on followup and Andrew on converting a small project to Swift.

Links:

• A Program That Runs on Metal « Edge Cases
• Scripting with C « Edge Cases
• nschum/SwiftHamcrest « GitHub
• The Time Machine Worst-Case Scenario « Edge Cases
• Playing Jenga with Microsoft Word « Edge Cases
• Helios - An Extensible Open-Source Mobile Backend Framework
• Michael Buckley tweet: “@edgecasesshow @rentzsch @apontious “KZ” is a German acronym for “concentration camp”, so KZPlayground could paint a disturbing picture…”
• Michael Buckley tweet: “@edgecasesshow @rentzsch @apontious … to German speaking people. Similarly, “NS” is a German acronym for the Nazi party.”
• Pyramid of Doom « Edge Cases
• The Lessons of Functional Programming for Cocoa… « The Mental Blog
• rentzsch/BlockStep « GitHub
• apontious/WatchSet « GitHub
• Rob Rix « Twitter

Pyramid of Doom

Andrew on hackathons and Wolf on .NET’s Async/Await.

Links:

• WatchKit Hackathon - apps for WATCH
• PHP CEO « Twitter
• Ben Morrow « Twitter
• James Dempsey « Twitter
• MacHack « Wikipedia
• Pyramid of Doom « Survive JavaScript
• Continuation-passing style « Wikipedia
• Async/Await FAQ - .NET Parallel Programming « MSDN Blogs
• Easier Asynchronous Programming with the New Visual Studio Async CTP « MSDN Magazine
• Pause and Play with Await « MSDN Magazine
• Async Performance: Understanding the Costs of Async and Await « MSDN Magazine
• Asynchronous Programming in C# 5.0 part two: Whence await? « Eric Lippert’s MSDN Blog

Who Watches the WatchKit?

Andrew talks with Wolf about the newly-released Apple WatchKit SDK.

Links:

• What you need to know about WatchKit « iMore
• Initial Impressions for WatchKit « David Smith
• How To Create A “Hello World” WatchKit App « Natasha the Robot
• WatchKit Extension Problem: Sharing a Core Data Store Can Lead to Duplicate « Jared Sinclair
• WatchKit: Initial Impressions « Ray Wenderlich
• Steve Stroughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) « Twitter
• Apple Watch (Swift + iOS, San Francisco + Silicon Valley) (San Francisco, CA) « Meetup
• WatchKit Hackathon - apps for WATCH
• A Few Thoughts on WatchKit and the Initial Apple Watch, by M.G. Siegler « Medium
• Lister (for Apple Watch, iOS, and OS X)
• Apps for iWatch and Apple TV « Edge Cases
• 92: You Don’t Know My Pants « Accidental Tech Podcast
• A day with WATCH « furbo.org

Rejected Episode Titles:

• I’m Going to Take Over the Podcast, Mwahahah
• Over Wolf’s Dead Body
• Not Masquerading as a Robot
• Suspiciously Binary
• Talk to Me As If I’m an Idiot
• Widget Watch
• Put Through the Wash Cycle About a Hundred Times
• Put Through the Watch Cycle
• KITT, I Need You
• A Device for People Who Don’t Like Taking Their Phone out of Their Pocket
• Very Bricky
• Beautiful Models Holding It at Exactly the Right Angle So That It Looks Cool
• The First of Its Species
• Literally Retina Watches in Your Eye
• Don’t Do Any Math There
• Weird, But That’s the Way We’re Doing It

Naiveté as a Service

Andrew on who’s making money on the iOS App Store and Wolf on using academic resources in commercial software development.

Links:

• Review: Monument Valley’s Forgotten Shores expansion is a triumph « iMore
• A Candid Look at Unread’s First Year « Jared Sinclair
• Omni « Brent Simmons (inessential.com)
• 74: One of Us Shipped Something « Accidental Tech Podcast
• The Omni Group
• Tapbots — Robots for your iPhone & iPod Touch
• AgileBits
• _DavidSmith
• Future of Fortunate Bear and VectorBoolean « Safe from the Losing Fight
• Damien Katz tweet: “Distributed systems, don’t read the literature. Most of it is outdated and unimaginiive. Invent and reinvent. The field is fertile. Really.”
• Damien Katz tweet: “When designing CouchDB, early on, I had experienced engineers tell me don’t. I don’t know enough. I look foolish.”
• Damien Katz tweet: “I was wrong. Don’t implement anything until you’ve read everything.”
• Leon Bambrick tweet: “@damienkatz i don’t think you really believe that. Implement, elicit constructive feedback and then JIT the lit. Surely?”
• Damien Katz tweet: “I don’t discourage anyone from reading papers. But sometimes a new perspective can produce amazing results. I try not to waste my ignorance.”
• Shoshin « Wikipedia
• The Pragmatic and the Academic « Edge Cases

“Here Be Dragons”–Style Comments

Wolf on code comments and Andrew on Appetize.io.

Links:

• Best coding practices, Comments « Wikipedia
• Appetize.io
• App.io
• Episode 129: We Totally Lost All Your Data « Core Intuition
• Episode 146: A Swift Bias « Core Intuition

Scripting with C

Andrew on the Swift section of John Siracusa’s Yosemite review and Wolf on Playgrounds for Objective-C.

Links:

• OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review, Swift « Ars Technica
• krzysztofzablocki/KZPlayground « GitHub
• Dynamic Code Injection
• DyCI/dyci-main « GitHub
• How it Works « DyCI/dyci-main Wiki
• Mike Ash’s comment « Hacker News

Race the Beam

Wolf on memory debugging and Andrew on AsyncDisplayKit.

Links:

• Letters: Enough Bus Errors « MacTech
• David Dunham (@radiofreelunch) « Twitter
• Data alignment: Straighten up and fly right « IBM developerWorks
• Code Mechanic: Better Than Ever Stress Testing « MacTech
• MacsBug « Wikipedia
• Scheme Editor Help: Running Your Application with Diagnostics
• libgmalloc(3) Mac OS X Manual Page
• Wolf’s Retain Release Debugging Overrides (not recommended) « GitHub Gist
• Demonolithization « Edge Cases
• AddressSanitizer « Wikipedia
• Microcosm of Security « Edge Cases
• Valgrind « Wikipedia
• AsyncDisplayKit
• Introducing AsyncDisplayKit: For smooth and responsive apps on iOS « Engineering Blog | Facebook Code | Facebook