Podcasts on blog.iankulin.com

Sean != Erica

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When Swift was newer, there was a bunch of podcasts about it - in early episodes of Fireside Swift the existence of a Swift Podcast Network is often mentioned, but now it’s more of an established language there’s a bit less current content to listen to, and what there is, is less focused on learning Swift and more about what’s happening in the community.

Being firmly in the camp of needing to learn more about the language, I’ve listen to a number of older podcasts, or even current ones (such as Fireside) but their older episodes. It is sort of an odd experience traveling on several slightly out of sync timelines, but quite a joy to see what happens to predictions - like the occasion when Paul Hudson predicts that an “Xcode lite” on iPad is unlikely to be able to write apps until a more swift like framework for developing interfaces exists.

One of the podcasts I’m working through by every episode is Paul’s Swift Over Coffee. The first season he was paired up with Sean Allen, but I’ve just started the second season with Erica Sadun. When I first came across Sean it took me a while to warm to his enthusiastic voice, but what I loved about him was he was never reluctant to ask Paul to explain something - usually something I needed explained as well. The dynamic of an expert (and expert teacher) co-hosting with a relative newbie was a great combination for me.

Erica is a giant in the Swift community, and she has a deep understanding and an wide knowledge of Swift topics, so she’s going to be great. In the first episode she and Paul riffed on a heap of interesting topics with great enthusiasm and clear enjoyment, but I did miss Sean asking for explanations!

Swift Over Coffee

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the iOS development podcasts in my current rotation is “Swift Over Coffee”, it’s blurb is:

Swift over Coffee is a podcast that helps you keep your Swift skills up to date the easy way, hosted by Paul Hudson and Erica Sadun. Each episode has news, our picks of the week, plus an open ballot where you can share your views on important topics.

And that is about how it goes. In Season One, it’s actually Paul and Sean Allen at the mic, they chat about news and topics related to Swift and iOS development, and each week there’s a Twitter question that people have chipped in on and the hosts go over these different views in some detail.

There’s only two seasons - in 2019 and 2020, but still there’s lots of good content for a beginning developer like me.

Fireside Swift

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the ways I keep engaged in a topic is to listen to podcasts about it. Currently Fireside Swift is one of the Swift/SwiftUI/iOS Development podcasts that I have in the rotation.

The blurb for the show is:

“Fireside Swift is a popular iOS Development podcast where four buddies discuss a new Swift programming topic each week. They try to stay informal while also conveying the information they know about each topic with bits of humor sprinkled throughout. Have a seat by the fire, and enjoy some nerdy discussion with friends!”

Which about sums it up. I listened to one later episode when the four hosts have a big ole chat before getting to the Swift topic, and although I didn’t love that - probably because I’m coming cold to it, when they got to the Swift topic it was pretty great - a good mix of experience and knowledge easily created a good conversation with some clear explanations.

Currently there are four hosts, but I’ve subscribed and gone back to the beginning when the hosts are just Steve Bernard & Zach Falgout - they are getting into the meat of the Swift topic quicker (while still being very chatty and casual) but they don’t always get to the bottom of their subjects, but I’m still finding it great listening. In particular they seem to focus on topics that would be of interest to someone with experience in different languages.

awesome-ios list on GitHub

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I was looking for some more podcasts with Swift fundamentals content when I came across this great community built awesome list.

There’s a few podcasts on the list I have not come across, so I’ll check them out.

iPad Pros - Swift Playgrounds

Sat, 09 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’m loving Swift Playgrounds - it’s getting daily use switching back and forwards between the iPad and MacBook. It’s sort of amazing that a tool to support education - it seems designed for primary school students, and is certainly being used that way - scales right up to “commercial” level app production.

iPad Pros is a podcast about iPads (unsurprisingly) by Tim Chaten and I listened to a 2017 episode about the launch of Playgrounds 4 with guest Frank Foster. The focus was more about using the iPad as a serious development tool - a la XCode for iPad - than the education possibilities. I’m all for XCode (or something closer) on iPad, but I’d be disappointed if Playgrounds was changed in any way that made it more intimidating for children.