00:00:00 ◼ ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
00:00:09 ◼ ► an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This is show number 189. Today is
00:00:19 ◼ ► get started. Okay, so this last week there was a little bit of drama about the role podcast
00:00:25 ◼ ► networks play in terms of distribution, discoverability, and so on. And while I don't intend to wade
00:00:30 ◼ ► into that discussion, it sparked something that I thought would make an interesting show.
00:00:37 ◼ ► And specifically, I wanted to talk about, I guess, the role that linking and recommendations
00:00:47 ◼ ► very considerable part of growing your audience, whether that is your app audience, whether
00:00:53 ◼ ► that is in terms of things like your followership online and whatever media you prefer to put
00:00:58 ◼ ► yourself out there. And it's quite considerable and quite measurable. I mean, I know this
00:01:08 ◼ ► it is if it hadn't been linked to by a variety of people over a long period of time. And
00:01:14 ◼ ► so what that made me want to do, though, for this purpose of this show is to return the
00:01:19 ◼ ► favor in some ways, or maybe pass it on anyway, and talk about how I stay informed about the
00:01:32 ◼ ► things that I think are worthwhile to keep up with, the ways in which I challenge myself
00:01:53 ◼ ► so this is the result. First thing is probably for her to say, one thing that I used to do
00:01:57 ◼ ► a lot that I don't really do as much anymore is you rely on Twitter to keep up with these
00:02:06 ◼ ► to shape your feed, the signal to noise ratio isn't that great. And so I tend to rely on
00:02:19 ◼ ► higher quality output for the time that you have to put into it. And for me, the majority
00:02:37 ◼ ► a variety of things that aren't work-related, certainly. I listen to a variety of other
00:02:51 ◼ ► probably. But as it relates to work, or specifically as it relates to iOS app development, what
00:03:00 ◼ ► podcasts allow me to do is to get, it's as though I have a variety of people who I work
00:03:05 ◼ ► with, who I get together with in the lunchroom every day at work, who I then kind of-- I'm
00:03:12 ◼ ► overhearing conversations, maybe is one way to think about it. I'm in this office place,
00:03:25 ◼ ► how things are going. And it's a different kind of feel than I think you get from a blog
00:03:29 ◼ ► post because with a podcast, it has inflection, it has personality. If someone's excited,
00:03:34 ◼ ► really comes through in a way that it doesn't, or if they're depressed or they're sad or
00:03:50 ◼ ► human level with how things are going in the industry that is so important to my livelihood.
00:03:56 ◼ ► And so here's the shows that I listen to and kind of the groups in which I try and think
00:04:08 ◼ ► And so these are shows that I listen to whose purpose is primarily to try and keep me thinking
00:04:13 ◼ ► about technology, about what design is involved, was involved in design, and those types of
00:04:24 ◼ ► mobile couch. Those are three shows that I listen to as soon as they come out. They have
00:04:33 ◼ ► of these are in the show notes, so don't worry about trying to find them. And those are shows
00:04:38 ◼ ► that I find keep me thinking on a more technical level about what's going on in the community.
00:04:44 ◼ ► And I've quite enjoyed sort of those. They're much more lower level, and so you sometimes
00:04:49 ◼ ► have to pick the right time to listen to them. But they definitely serve a solid purpose
00:04:54 ◼ ► in keeping, exposing me to things that I wouldn't necessarily otherwise, especially iterate
00:05:04 ◼ ► bit or at least make me aware of things that I just wouldn't be otherwise because design
00:05:08 ◼ ► is not my background. Design is not something that I think about quite as much, and so it's
00:05:20 ◼ ► basis are more kind of the business-y aspects of doing development, you know, especially
00:05:32 ◼ ► And so there's a lot of things that go into that that are very complicated and that have
00:05:39 ◼ ► Things like pricing, things like how you handle updates on the actual business side of that.
00:05:53 ◼ ► There's a lot of those types of business kind of issues that hearing other people's experiences
00:06:02 ◼ ► my outlook on those types of things are Release Notes and Core Intuition. And there are shows
00:06:15 ◼ ► Plinske, and they're talking about just the business of iOS development pretty straightforwardly.
00:06:21 ◼ ► And on Core Intuition, it's Daniel Jalkut and Mitten Reese, who talk a bit more generally
00:06:26 ◼ ► about things, but it seems like their conversations often end up in relating to the business side
00:06:33 ◼ ► of things. And what I love about these two shows in concert is that they come at it from
00:06:38 ◼ ► such totally different sides. So on Core Intuition, there's some guys who have been doing this
00:06:43 ◼ ► for a long time, and Daniel has especially been coming at this on the Mac side for years.
00:06:49 ◼ ► And then on the release notes side, it's much more iOS. It's a bit fresher. It's a bit more
00:06:54 ◼ ► kind of new thinking, if you wanted to say. And so the tension and the differences between
00:06:59 ◼ ► those two perspectives is really helpful in helping me find my path in between, because
00:07:04 ◼ ► I'm not necessarily, you know, everyone ultimately has to find their own kind of path in business
00:07:10 ◼ ► and decide what's important to you and what isn't. But I find having that kind of tension
00:07:14 ◼ ► really helps. Next, are kind of some more of, I guess you sort of call them the general
00:07:20 ◼ ► news shows. So these are things that I just listen to, in some ways just for entertainment,
00:07:25 ◼ ► but also just to kind of get the broad, more topical things of what's going on in the community.
00:07:51 ◼ ► There's a lot more. They tend to cover a pretty good breadth of topics. It's certainly thoughtfully
00:07:58 ◼ ► considered, but they tend to cover a lot of what happened in the week, which is sometimes
00:08:06 ◼ ► for a little over an hour and get a pretty good sense of what happened, which is especially
00:08:10 ◼ ► helpful, say, over the summer when I'm away on travel or those types of things. It's good
00:08:25 ◼ ► oriented. It's a bit more just kind of them feeding off each other in a discussion environment
00:08:31 ◼ ► about generally topical things. But I find that it works well in terms of trying to expand
00:08:36 ◼ ► of the thoughts that I have on the implications of the news. So that's why I enjoy that one.
00:08:42 ◼ ► And then that's mostly the sort of the podcasts that I listen to. As I said, there's obviously
00:08:48 ◼ ► a bunch more, but those are the kind of shows that I find even if you just listened to those
00:08:54 ◼ ► seven shows, I think you'd have a pretty good handle on what's going on in the iOS development
00:08:58 ◼ ► community, in the Apple community, Apple hardware, just general tech news, you know, what happened
00:09:02 ◼ ► at Google I/O this week, these types of things. And that's an important part of being able
00:09:07 ◼ ► to make good decisions, is having good information. On the blog side, one thing that I did -- there's
00:09:14 ◼ ► a couple of blogs that I really find incredibly helpful that have helped me as a developer,
00:09:19 ◼ ► and I want to just kind of quickly run down those now. The first is The Inessential, which
00:09:29 ◼ ► he's talking about. Recently, he's been doing a lot of talk about sync in an app that he has called
00:09:33 ◼ ► Vesper. But the way in which he approaches problems is something that I think I, the actual
00:09:40 ◼ ► details of what he's talking about often don't aren't particularly necessarily relevant to me.
00:09:45 ◼ ► But the way in which he approaches problems is very constructive to help me think about my own
00:09:51 ◼ ► thought process. Hopefully that makes sense. And, you know, he has a very clear way of describing
00:09:56 ◼ ► how he attaches, attacks a problem, and seeing other people attack a problem, you know, you're
00:10:01 ◼ ► not dealing with that same problem yourself, is often helpful in helping you kind of craft
00:10:10 ◼ ► The next blog I'd highly recommend is Jared Sinclair's blog. Jared Sinclair is the maker
00:10:35 ◼ ► quite a few of them where he looks and takes an app and kind of just looks at its design
00:10:40 ◼ ► from top to bottom and tries to identify areas that it's strong areas that it's weak. And
00:10:50 ◼ ► constructively about my own designs, trying to think, "Hmm, would that apply to me? And
00:11:02 ◼ ► Bergemann, which hopefully I pronounced that even vaguely right. He just blogs about really
00:11:09 ◼ ► interesting technical details, and it is just one of those things, as soon as he posts something,
00:11:13 ◼ ► I always saw what I'm doing and I read it. Because it's almost, I always learn something
00:11:17 ◼ ► from the things that he writes. And I like the way his style in writing, it's very clear
00:11:21 ◼ ► and concise. And then lastly, on the blog side, MacStories.net, which is Federico Vittucci's
00:11:29 ◼ ► site, is what I found to be probably the best general overview of what's going on in Apple.
00:11:36 ◼ ► Currently, it's fairly focused on Apple, which I like in terms of it's not trying to cover
00:11:40 ◼ ► a lot of different areas. And it covers it at a good level where it's not this kind of,
00:12:21 ◼ ► And if this is, if you're someone who is coming at development and are expecting to do a lot
00:12:25 ◼ ► of it on your own, is the most dangerous thing you can do is to get stuck thinking about
00:12:37 ◼ ► Your desk is only not challenging yourself quite as much as you would if you were thinking
00:12:42 ◼ ► about things from someone else's perspective. How would they solve this problem? I wonder
00:12:46 ◼ ► what Brent would think if he was dealing with this problem. And so thinking about things
00:13:00 ◼ ► And these are the tools and the things that I found that I need in order to stay current,
00:13:05 ◼ ► order to keep what I'm doing fresh, and so that I don't kind of, you know, get petrified
00:13:14 ◼ ► A couple of random, more just general recommendations that I'll finish off the show with, but on
00:13:25 ◼ ► have the floor and I'm talking about things I'd like to expose to other people. A couple
00:13:29 ◼ ► of podcasts I've recently started to really enjoy that I thought I'd just commend to you.
00:14:00 ◼ ► And the fascinating thing about this is I always thought that John Siracusa was a singular
00:14:08 ◼ ► The way in which he can critique and challenge things and the way in which he can do it in
00:14:15 ◼ ► CGP Grey is, if anything, he is the closest to anyone else I've ever discovered to a Siracusa
00:14:27 ◼ ► So if you like Type or Critical, you like ATP, there's a good chance you'll really like
00:14:34 ◼ ► And lastly is Pragmatic, which is a show that just talks about technology in a really interesting,
00:14:43 ◼ ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.