Thank you RailsClips Kickstarter Backers!

 

02:02 - Is Objective-C dead? Will all apps eventually be written in Swift?

08:48 - Xcode Support

10:18 - Mixing Objc and Swift (Becoming Bilingual) or Choosing One or the Other?

25:33 - Is there a dying language?

27:05 - If you learn Swift are you disadvantaged if you don’t know Objc?

Picks

iOS Animations by Tutorials by Ray Wenderlich (Alondo)
Elevator Saga (Alondo)
Vibrato.fm (Jaim)
CODE 87-Key Illuminated Mechanical Keyboard with White LED Backlighting - Cherry MX Clear (Chuck)
Grifiti Fat Wrist Pad (Chuck)
Pebble Watch Kickstarter Campaign (Chuck)
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Chuck)

Are you attending MicroConf? Chuck wants to know! Tweet him at @cmaxw.

 

UPS Just showed up.

[Chuckles] How can you tell?

It’s the doorbell and the dog going bananas.

Hey everybody and welcome to episode 99 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel we have Jaim Zuber.

I got up too early this morning. Things might get a little bit weird.

Alondo Brewington.

Hello from North Carolina.

I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv.

I just want to throw out a quick thank you to anyone who backed my Kickstarter campaign. It did fund. So I’m going to be making videos about Ruby on Rails which may or may not be interesting to people listening to this show. It does help me get a little bit closer to being able to do the show stuff a little bit more full time.

Anyway our topic today is, is Objective-C dead?

It’s done. Put a fork in it. I’m not saying the fat lady’s singing but she’s warming up. Okay, are we done? [Chuckles] No, maybe not.

[Inaudible 02:18] hear the music for it right now.

I’m sure they’re tuning maybe, getting ready for the final.

So are you saying that they’re probably going to – eventually all apps are going to be written in swift?

Well ,definitely a lot of it [inaudible 02:33] around the language. It’s got a lot of adoption much more than I thought at this stage. [Inaudible 02:41] For many people who have started some dev efforts in swift work have already completely switched over. There’s a bit surprise to me because I thought it was still early in the process. So that makes me wonder how much longer are we going to be working with Objective-C.

Definitely, I’ve noticed that trend. Over the past two, three months – it's March 2015 right now and I’ve noticed a tide turn. People have been comfortable with swift going forward and actually doing real development, go getting paid, going to the app stores.

It’s a good question, is Objective-C going to stick around?

I think a lot of that depends on Apple. Is Apple going to kill it? Or I don’t think they’ve given it an official word, have they?

No.

Also just looking at history, multi-language support with Apple, they’re always been some, but I don’t know if a language – Objective-C is pretty much the premier language for development. There have been efforts at various times to support some other ones but it never seems to have gotten the type of support that swift is. It seems like they’re really backing it and pushing it. I would say this time is a bit different than other prior efforts.

Yeah, even with older frameworks. People stuck with carbon for a long time for development. People will stick with it as long as Apple will support it which was until the past release or two. I’m definitely not hearing signs from Apple that Objective-C is going away. It’s a first class language on a platform and it’s going to continue to be.

Do you think it’ll fade though as the popular way of doing things?

I think that’s happening now. Just seeing a lot of blog posting, a lot of books coming out. There’s definitely a sort of sea change that’s happening in terms of learning materials, things of that nature that are – people are excited about swift and they’re actually providing the examples in swift and these techniques. So they're not – I’m not saying that no one’s interested in providing those materials in Objective-C, but it seems like now versus a year ago, question would be like, “Do you have any example on swift?” And now it’s “Do you still have an example in Objective-C for me to look at?”

Yeah, I think it’s definitely a case where you’re going to need to be bilingual. At least look at both and understand what’s happening with Objective-C. I don’t necessarily see people doing all swift development and not knowing Objective-C. There’s just so much code out there that’s written in Objective-C. The framework is still Objective-C. That hasn’t changed.

Anything you want to do, at least interact with Objective-C. In that sense, we’re stuck with it. Maybe Apple’s working on view controllers, UI kit stuff that’s pure swift. That’d be pretty cool but I haven’t heard about it. That’d be a pretty huge undertaking.

Yeah, I think if they started either replacing or rewriting framework in swift, then you might start thinking, “Okay, they’re probably moving toward rolling things out.” Even then, some of these framework have been around for quite a while so I could also see them, updating them and doing it in the latest and greatest language.

Yeah, I would definitely say if we start seeing something like UI kit done in swift then that’s definitely a nail in the coffin for Objective-C. It'd be hard to deny that that’s Apple’s intent is to move away from Objective-C support. As far as being completely dead, I still think that there are opportunities out there.

You got Legacy code that just exists. I don’t know how that would play out as far as what client are willing to do, or companies are willing to do with their code bases. Is it worth the effort to bring someone in as a swift developer to update that code base?

Yeah, just the sheer amount of Legacy code that’s out there. It’s going to be there. There’s going to be support for quite a long time. There will be riots in the street with some pretty deep pockets behind them, if Apple really wanted to do away with Objective-C.

Realistically, I’ve been doing mostly swift for the past few months, and I’m still dropping into Objective-C for little bits and pieces of things here.

Really. Like what?

I’m not particularly creating Objective-C file but I’ll have to derive something from NSObjects if I want this thing to be loaded by a nib. The framework you type things that you’ve been doing, I’m dropping down to Objective-C-ish things. Even though I’m technically writing swift, I’m using all the dynamic runtime things. So that’s baked in.

So is this a by-product of not using storyboards? Or [inaudible 07:11] custom nibs?

You do a storyboard or a nib. We talked about dependency injection; Jay Thrash [inaudible 07:18]. If you want to create a class that’s going to be built, loaded by your nib, it has to be NSObject. The nibs are not going to look at and find a regular swift object in there, so that all requires NSObject.

In that sense, we’re stuck with NSObjects, a view controller. A little down the ways is it’s still NSObjects. As much as I like to be a pure swift world, I learned pretty quick that it’s not going to happen. There’s things you can do purely swift-y but a lot of things that you’re still – if you want to use the stuff that’s there, load it via nib.

Another example is notifications. So if you want to find notification, call this method a class. If it’s just a swift object, it doesn’t derive from NSObjects, and then it’s just going to fail silently. You’re going to hit your head against a wall. I’ve seen a number of people make the same mistakes I did. To give the runtime goodness that we’re used to, interacting with the frameworks and notifications, we’re still deriving from NSObjects for a lot of things or at least flagging the method as Objective-C.

That’s one of the tags you can do.

Are there other examples of things that just don’t work or don’t work well in swift? I know that they have been working to make it fully function but it sounds like it’s just not quite there yet. I’m just wondering what other gotchas are out there.

If you want to be in a pure swift sandbox, it’s kind of a sandbox, it’s not huge. There’s a lot we can do in there; interacting with the framework at large. In a lot of cases we’re still dropping down into Objective-C dynamic type stuff.

What about the tooling?

The tooling, I’d say XCode is pretty good. I haven’t tried the new version that has the swift 1.2 yet. I’m pretty happy with it. There’s no refactoring support, it’s very minimal. If you’ve gotten used to not having any refactoring support which I’m sure all XCode developers have been used to for a long time.

Totally sounds that we got to second that because I’m already used to not having it.

We’re already used to it. Now that the newer version of XCode actually do some things fairly smartly with Objective-C. It can rename things and have it intelligently go through and update the freight values, go in a nib actually and change things. On the Objective-C side, you have more support if you like the id features. I’ve just gotten used to not – it not being there. It may have been snuck up and may sneak up and work better but I haven’t seen that yet.

The source kit crashes which sometimes you used to have to restart XCode to get your color encoding working correctly or your code completion but that generally repairs itself quickly. So overall, XCode works pretty well with swift.

Or as well as it does with Objective-C. I’m still getting quite a number of unexpected crashes even just attaching devices and trying to run code in Objective-C right now. It’s a little frustrating. Makes me feel a little bit better that if I switch to swift it wouldn’t really change much.

No, it’s definitely a few steps back with swift. It’s definitely not as solid but XCode does not crash very often anymore. So that’s good.

I wonder – so, in this landscape we’re right in the middle and she said, “The need is to be bilingual.” Just knowing how some people are about language both spoken and computer that are bit resistant to that change. What does that mean for them, as far as what you’re seeing in terms of the ability to work on project? Are people who are staunch Objective-C only developers going to be relegated to maintenance projects at some point soon?

I don’t think so. I think it’s reasonable to start a project with Objective-C. I started a project with Objective-C last week even though I’ve been doing mostly swift. It makes sense for a lot of cases, there’s things that Objective-C does a lot better. Talk about some – Andrew is here, he’s tweeted a lot about it. There are just things that a more mature language that’s been on the framework for a long time is going to handle better. A lot of runtime stuff, that’s already made in, we’re already used to it, and we understand how the patterns work so Objective-C still very cool.

Are there things out there that nudge you toward one direction or the other. For example if I go into XCode in the latest version and I create new project, is it going to default Objective-C or to swift?

I don’t know, I think it remembers what you did last. I‘m not sure what the default one does which is annoying because I switch between projects with different clients. The new file dialogue even goes between swift and Objective-C, doesn’t remember it per project which is like, “Oh no, shoot. What’s this .m file? I don’t need this .m file.”

The documentation, does it give you examples in both languages?

Yes. Documentation is pretty solid. Most of the pages you can choose Objective-C, swift or both. I found it pretty good, no matter which one I’m working with.

I do want to get back to what Alondo said about having two languages and if you just know Objective-C, are you relegated to the back row of development. I don’t think so. I think if you start an Objective-C project because you’re afraid of swift and new features and it’s not quite ready and things aren’t perfect – there’s still bugs in the language – you’re probably being a little too conservative, if he just go right into swift because you think Objective-C the old way of doing things. You’re probably doing a little bit too forward thinking because they’re both going to coexist for quite a while.

That’s comforting because I do like the idea of being able to actively develop in both languages talking advantage of whichever one is preferable in a given situation. I am worried though, quite frankly that eventually Objective-C would disappear, that we wouldn’t have the support. I don’t necessarily think that it’s dying on the vine right now, and it would happen in the next year or two but. I’ve gotten – I’ve grown accustomed to using Objective-C, it can move from C#; I really do like it.

I’m excited about swift though, I haven’t done any projects in it outside with just fooling around at the playground. But I would really like to live in the world where I had the option of using both. I would use both.

Yeah, definitely. Most of the signs that I’m seeing; is it going to be brother and sister going forward, use the right the one for the job. I just did an NSOperation in swift and it was a nightmare trying to figure out how to make it happen correctly the way I wanted it to.

I think I’m seeing a trending – it could just be a trend that everyone’s all excited about swift that’s actually usable. A lot of new projects are using it and people are having success. The big question is that a consistent trend, something that’s going to keep going? Or it’s the curve where everyone gets excited about something and it crashes down back to earth and they realize it’s terrible. It doesn’t do what we want it to do. Then it comes back up, what’s the name of that curve? Does anybody know?

Everyone gets excited, then they think it’s terrible, then usage comes right back up as people, “Okay, here’s where this is the right tool for the job.” So we could be on the first upswing where everyone’s all excited or we could be on the second upswing. I’m not sure.

I’m just curious about that. You mentioned some upswing shift up. I’m not aware of any app set to go popular or out there on my radar that have been recently rewritten in swift and have shipped to the app store. Examples would be awesome if you know.

Nothing I can really talk about but apps you’ve heard of are being developed in swift. I don’t think it makes sense to rewrite Objective-C app in swift unless you can rewrite it anyway. Something that’s been around in Objective-C land for a long time. They’re probably not thinking, “I want to redo this in swift.”

I guess one example, we had Justin Spahr-Summers on last week and he talked about GitHub so that’s swift, mostly swift I believe. I don’t know everything but they’re doing a lot in swift.

That’s the other thing is they really mix in the project both swift and Objective-C is probably leaning towards people willingness to really adopt it, and bringing it and start to doing development on front and center projects.

Yeah, definitely. One of the things that surprised me is how well they’re integrated. They’re two very different languages. One’s dynamic, small taught based instant messages one’s were compiled C++–ish with modern features.

I was trying to write a unit test for an Objective-C library I was going to do the swift way of doing things which is subclass it and I’ll write one of the methods. I’m like, “Wait a minute, can I derive a swift class from an Objective-C class?” Thought about it, “That seems weird, how could that even work,” and it turns out it can.

I realized a little later that well duh, almost all of the classes that we’re using from the framework are Objective-C classes that were overwriting in swift, our UI view controllers. It will have its Objective-C under the hood. It’s very common, so even subclasses can be a different language.

That was awesome. It gives me hope for my dual world where the both of the languages persist.

Yeah, and even you have a C# background, I had a C# background. The concepts in swift are preexisting. Most of them aren’t terribly new; they’re in C#. So if you know how to do it then it’ll [inaudible 16:10]. They’re called optional now so I think people generally become more comfortable doing both.

Do you have any issues switching back and forth in that environment between the languages?

All the time, just the compiler brain farts. Instead of let this thing equals, it starts of in a string and I put the asterisk up there and, “Why isn’t this compiled, what’s going on?” I’ve been doing this for years, “Oh yeah. Swift project.” Little compile things get me but those are [inaudible 16:39].

One other thing that I’m noticing because I’ve been working through Ray Wenderlich’s stuff is that all of the tutorials that he has out there are in swift. So the new crop of developers out there are probably going to be learning to do new things in swift and not in Objective-C.

Yeah I think you’re right. That was the thing that I noticed at RWDevCon as well was that it was completely in swift. In fact I wasn’t really ready for that [chuckles]. I walked in and started working through some of the tutorials. I was just like I had to get my brain to switch over to start even thinking in terms of swift. I came in fully expecting there would be some Objective-C but they really had gone full blown adopting swift. It was nice, I really did enjoy that fact, to be immersed in it. I think that’s a great way to do it.

I think you’re absolutely right, the next crop of developers. I know a lot of Ruby devs from work that just when swift was announced they were just super psyched about developing for it, in a way that they just weren’t with Objective-C. So I think it’s got a lot of fans even coming from other languages.

I think that’s a good point. I think people are afraid of Objective–C. It’s very different than most of the other popular languages. Swift seems a little bit more familiar; you’re doing Ruby, C# – wherever you’re coming from. I haven’t thought about yet new developers picking up iOS apps just doing swift only.

17] with. How do you do that?” It’s always good to have an additional tool in your tool belt as it were.

I agree. Unfortunately my Cobalt experience hasn’t helped me [chuckles].

I’m sure, yeah. Apples working on that, they just haven’t announced it yet.

We could talk about, other than Objective-C and swift what are some other complementary languages that work in iOS, Mac world? Obviously C, there’s a lot of C involved. When you do iOS development, a lot of C could do it.

That’s true, with Objective-C being a super set of C. In fact that is exactly where I was going to go with this is that you can get a pretty wide and varied experience doing the same thing, right? You can build iOS apps in Objective-C or C or you can do hybrid apps with JavaScript. I think there are a couple of systems out there that actually compile the JavaScript to the Objective-C runtime through LLVM, RubyMotion compiles to LLVM; I’m pretty sure Xamarin does. So you have all of these different options.

It’s actually adding a lot to the ecosystem just in the sense that if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, then you’re experience is going to be less valuable than if you’re learning many ways to do things. So if you’re going out and you’re fighting these other battles, and just recognizing that there are things that you still have to learn, and taking advantage of the experiences that are out there for you to have then you can benefit from those.

By swift being a first class, supported by Apple member of the development tools arena, people can go out and learn a different way to do things and a different way to think about problems.

I think that’s an excellent point too. I think that thrusts that need to continually challenge yourself as a developer. It’s so easy to rely on your comforts, your strengths without really pushing yourself. That’s the thing that I’m looking forward to. Not just in the vein of not learning Swift, and working with swift, but even the types of apps that I’m working on because since I’ve started developing for this ecosystem, all the apps have tended to be the same type. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about a week or so ago, and we’re talking about branching out and doing different types of projects as well. I think combining that with swift really would promote getting a different mindset of problem solving in different types of challenges.

Yeah, there’s a – I actually started a hack night about a year ago. I never quite knew what I wanted it to be. I just wanted to be somewhere where I could go and talk to people and experience some other viewpoints. After the latest batch of conferences I went to, which was a few weeks ago, I realized what I really wanted was someplace to be creative.

So I’ve changed the group so that it’s now a creative coding group. What we do is we get together. So last week we were working on twitter bots and it was just “look for mentions” is the idea. Take whatever people are mentioning at you and then sending back a response, just for fun. I don’t have any practical application for this. I’m sure I can think of something that might be useful for it to do.

So we hooked in to the Google translate APIs. We built – so you tweet at it in English or any other language incidentally because you can tell it through the API to actually guess what the language is that’s being sent in then it’ll translate it. The person I was working with wanted to do it in German. So you tweet at it in any language and it’ll reply with the translation in German, just for the heck of it.

Having those opportunities to branch out and try something new and just experiment and play and learn is vital in this profession.

It is if you have the certain mindset where you’re trying expand what you’re doing. There’s also a subset of developers that, they show up, they sit in a chair every day and they do what their company says, “This is what you need to do, this is our framework, this is what we work with.” And they don’t worry about it.

I ran into a Smalltalk developer about a month ago. I was like, “Wow, really? You do Smalltalk? Who even hires Smalltalk?” There’s a few companies in town that still do, they have had the code base since early 90s whenever Smalltalk was the thing. There was always the joke when I was school that, “You know if you learn Cobalt, you’ll have work for the rest of your life.” There’s not much Cobalt out there [chuckles].

[Crosstalk 22:47] Done work [chuckles].

You’re going to hate your life, but definitely.

Yeah, I definitely – I read a book about having a career as a software developer. One of the recommendations that the author made was to have a toe in two pools. One is a burgeoning up and coming technology or language and then one is one that’s dying.

Basically the idea was that you always have work because there’s a small pool of people who are really on that cutting edge who are learning about the new language. And there are very few people that are still left that may know an older language. Not only would you still be in demand, being able to find project work, but both of those tend to pay pretty well as well. Then suggesting that is quite a lucrative approach.

So in our discussion, is that swift and Objective-C as far as the cutting edge language and language that maybe on its way out?

Yeah, I guess in this regard I think swift is an up and coming language and it fits that first – that one pool. I don’t think Objective-C though is the language in the other category that’s dying. I think you probably have to find something else that really is fallen out of favor, and fewer and fewer companies are going to develop fewer and fewer projects that need that support.

Although we’ll say you can probably find projects though in Objective-C that may be difficult for them to find people that are willing or interested in working on them because they’re not really solving any interesting problems anymore. Basically a maintenance mode, maybe just bugs to be fixed in every iteration.

If we could do a Blackberry work, you could probably find someone that needs a Blackberry work done [crosstalk 24:25]. If you’re the Blackberry person you could still do it; you could probably charge a pretty good rate for whatever companies are still doing Blackberry.

Yeah, it’s funny. We still get requests sometimes for Blackberries. The ones that we [inaudible

24:40] in a company we get a request for a Windows version and a Blackberry version. The Windows version did a [inaudible 24:45], Blackberry’s just like, “No, that’s not going to happen.”

Yup, you never know.

All these technology has its life cycle right?

Who knows? Five years, are we going to be talking about iOS? Maybe not, maybe it’s something else. Maybe iOS is the fading technology in five years.

I think you’re right. I think five years – because my hopeful scenario is just like in two years, I don’t think it’s going away but in five years, it’s a pretty a possibility that we are legitimately saying I think Objective-C is done. No one’s doing it. JavaScript will still be around then.

Its true. JavaScript is like the cockroach.

Yeah, but everybody will be transpiling to JavaScript, right? They won’t actually be writing it.

Could be got my swift JavaScript converter. Keep my skills up to date.

Very nice. If Objective-C isn’t really that’s fading out, is there something else that’s dying or does there have to be?

There always has to be in the mobile world iOS that we’re talking about, is there anything really going away? There’s probably not a real demand for Objective-C ++, not that there ever was but [inaudible 25:50] library you need to integrate it. You’re probably thinking that way.

I think you’re touching on something that if we look at the goal of that language, is it there to really solve a fundamental problem or was it there as an arm ramp or bridge for the fact that there were far more developers that are acquainted with the other language.

Once you hit a critical mass of ample developers that can write natively, those types of languages, they go away; the supports is not necessary anymore. With swift we’ll probably see something similar as we were talking about earlier. Just that the excitement and growth and the number of new developers. There won’t necessarily be a need.

The only difference is that Objective-C is such an integral part right now by way of framework that there’s still a lot of fundamental work that would have to be done to really uproot and get rid of it.

Such that you could totally do away with Objective-C. I still think that that’s quite a ways away.

Yeah, definitely. If the language is designed to solve a big headache, it’s probably going to stay around than something that solves say a minor stub toe or something; that can hurt too but – my metaphors are all off today [chuckles]. Your language is probably pretty safe. I think Objective-C and swift both solve big headaches.

So the other question I have then is if you learn swift, are you going to be disadvantaged if you never learned Objective-C?

That’s a brilliant question. From my experience and what I’m seeing right now, depending on where you are, I’d actually lean towards yeah. I think you are disadvantaged right now if you are just learning swift. I would encourage anyone to – I think you’re better off – be in a safer position of course knowing Objective-C right now, not knowing swift than the other way.

Do you think that’s going to change?

Yes.

That would probably change a lot sooner than the death nail of Objective-C, if that does ever occur. That could easily be something in a year or two, maybe even sooner that – I wouldn’t say that. I’m saying that you’re fine Objective-C it’s not going to hamper it all.

When you consider probably at least 90% of the code written on the platform is Objective-C. It’s a pretty big hindrance not to know it. So people that already knew it, they’re going to be at an advantage.

Even trying to do multi-swift I found, can’t do pure swift. It doesn’t do as much all of the things that I want to do even third pie libraries. If you’re sticking to just swift, your sticking to big ones, or new ones. A lot of times you’re going to be dropping to Objective-C and you should have an understanding of what’s happening and how it’s different even though a lot of cases you can get by without knowing it. What you do need to know it’s just you’re in for a big headache just having that knowledge helps you out.

I’m just really curious to see how true all of that is in a year.

I definitely think we’re going to see a change in a year. I think opinions about that would be significantly different. I expect me to be [inaudible 28:45] anyway.

I think definitely we’ll have more – if you want to be pure swift you’ll have more options with third party frameworks libraries. I don’t see Objective-C making big new clients; maybe small. I think swift will be making new games because I think we’re still getting more and more developers to the platform. I think swift will continue to grow, Objective-C will grow just not as fast. I think they’re both going to be pretty widely used.

I’m going to agree with that. I think you’re right. I think we’re seeing growth and developers not – I don’t think that growth is going to some at the expense of Objective-C. That pie is just going to look a little different.

That’s true, the pie-shaped, maybe, Objective-C is shrinking but as far as number of developers, probably stay in the same or improving a little bit.

Yup. Anything else we should touch on with this before we get to the picks?

Do we have a conclusion or is it foregone?

I would say it’s not dead yet.

It’s not dead yet, it’s not even medium rare. That was a terrible metaphor [chuckles]. If you cook it, okay.

It does seem like the general consensus is that; no, it’s not dead and no, we don’t foresee it as going away anytime soon.

Right, ignore the haters. Sticking around.

Alright, let’s go ahead and do some picks. Alondo, do you want to start us off with picks?

Sure. In the bane of learning swift I have a great book that I’ve picked up at RWDevCon called iOS Animations by Tutorials. It is from Ray Wenderlich tutorials. All the examples are in swift. They do a great job with tutorials. So if you wanted to get started doing current – using animations and maybe integrating some new code using swift, this is probably a good place to start.

39] is the Elevator Saga for learning – I was recently teaching my – introducing my nephews to programming. Now, it’s not Objective-C and its not swift; it's JavaScript. It’s a great on boarding engaging way. I figured if it works on a teenager, it would be a nice resource for anyone who’s interested in getting started. It’s fun to play, it’s really simple, and you can pick it up really quickly. It’s a great way to start working programming particularly JavaScript. So those are my two picks for this week.

Awesome. I’m wondering if I can get my nine year old into that. It’s nothing to set up–.

Exactly that’s what I liked about it, it didn’t even require me to go out and get a secondary machine.

Just fire up on the browser and we sat there are just had fun with it.

Yup. Alright, Jaim what are your picks?

Alright, I’ve got one pick. Remember once upon a time I used to talk with a guy named Ben Scheirman, vaguely remember?

Yeah, I liked that guy.

I liked the guy. He’s one of the original people on the iPhreaks show. He’s back with a new podcast. This is not tech related. Its guitar related, so he plays guitar. I’ve been checking it out. I play guitar and I’ve been playing for a long time but I still learn some new stuff. I forget the name of the other host, but another iOS developer I believe. Odd little idiosyncrasy.

He’s doing a podcast. Mostly talking about guitar, gears, practicing. I’ve been playing for decades and I learned some stuff. Check out Vibrato.fm. Starring Ben Scheirman. That is my pick.

Very cool. I’ve got a couple of picks. The first one is – I bought a new keyboard. It’s the WASD code keyboard. It’s got mechanical switches in it. For the mechanical switches – for people who really care about that stuff – I got the Cherry MX Clear switches. I’m starting to wonder though if I want, if I should have gotten one with the blue switches that have a little bit more resistance at the top and then they release and they go down. I am liking it, I feel like I can type a little bit faster in it. I don’t know if I can actually type a little bit faster in it because I haven’t timed myself or anything, but I am really liking it.

It does have a few features on it. It has toggle switches on the back so you can actually set it to run, for example, the Mac way. So it says Alt on my keyboard because it’s the standard QWERTY keyboard but that Alt button is actually the command button. The button next to it, there’s a blank is the Alt button.

The reason is because there’s a switch on there that switches those keys. There are a few other switches on that change a couple of different things. You can also set the keys to be backlit. I think it’s cool, so I turn it one sometimes but I don’t actually use it all that often. So it’s got a few features that are pretty nice. Overall it’s a pretty nice keyboard. It’s not a cheap keyboard. Let’s just put it that way.

Before that I was using the Aluminum Apple keyboard. I figured out that with the clear switches, they’re not so loud. You can hear me type and clatter away. So I do like that about that one; I’m doing the podcast.

Another pick is I got this foam wrist rest off of Amazon. I’m really digging that as well, that was like eight bucks. I got this really cheap looking wrist rest next to a 150 dollar keyboard. So go figure.

I also backed a Kickstarter campaign. I mentioned at the start of the show that I had a funded Kickstarter campaign and that’s for the Pebble Watch. They’re doing a new round with color e-ink. I should be getting that in July and I’m really excited about that.

Then one other pick that I’m going to throw out there, if any of you are going to MicroConf please let me know. You could just tweet at me @cmaxw. I’d love to know, I’ve love to meet up with you. I’m getting stickers printed for all of the shows. I actually got them for three of the shows. I’m getting them for two of the shows pretty soon here. That should be awesome.

Those are all my pick. Oh, one more pick. I read a book, or listened to a book on Audible called Ready Player One. I think it’s been picked on the show before. Anyway, I loved it. So if you like the old 80’s video game stuff. It takes place in a virtual universe and the real world. It’s kind of dystopian in the real world. I didn’t like some of the outlooks that some of the characters had, but over all I really enjoyed it. The reason I didn’t like him was mostly because I’m an optimist and I just didn’t agree with that outlook.

Great books, great stuff and those are my picks.

Awesome. [Inaudible 35:10] find a lot of optimism in dystopian [chuckle].

Yeah, I think that’s a new genre. You just created it.

Optimistic dystopian novels?

Yup.

Yup.

One other thing I want to just want to toss out there, if you want to get emailed when the show comes out, you can do that now. Just go to iphreaksshow.com and enter your email address at the top of the page.

One other thing that I also want to throw out there is that I’ve had a few people who listen to this show say that they would like me to put on a remote conference like I’m doing for Ruby right now and like I did for JavaScript last month. I’m totally down with that, I just need to know that enough people are interested. So if you want to tweet at me about to too that would be cool.

Besides that I’m don’t think I have any other announcements or thoughts. Unless you guys do I’ll wrap up the show.