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Sandbox
A browsable archive of writing and notes across the site.
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Libraries and frameworks
Most of us have a rough mental model of what a library and a framework are. This post lays out the basics — not every byte, just enough to be useful. I covered the broader compile …
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Build Process
A programming language goes through roughly five stages on its way to a running program, each with its own tool: Preprocessor Compiler Assembler Linker Loader Let’s walk …
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Building a little utility: Swwwitch
I saw something making the rounds in the dev community recently, so I built a small tool — a quick way to consolidate a few Cocoa-app features I’d been meaning to try. …
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How Mac apps launch at login
Launching at login is one of the most common features for a Cocoa app — especially the menu-bar utilities that are meant to be always-on. Let’s walk through how to add this …
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How do dockless Mac apps work?
Menu-only apps are one of the most common patterns in Cocoa-land. They don’t take up a spot in your Dock, they don’t get in the way when you’re switching across …
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Using Yinxiangbiji in Safari on an English-language macOS
Evernote runs a separate account system in China — Yinxiangbiji (印象笔记) — and last year the team there spun off entirely. But the Safari Web Clipper is still the same extension …
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Adding a backgroundColor to NSView
NSView is the most basic building block in Cocoa — the foundation of every Mac app’s view hierarchy, exactly like UIView is for iOS. But the dead-simple backgroundColor …
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The Subjects in RxSwift
All diagrams in this post are from the book RxSwift - Reactive Programming with Swift. In the Rx world, a Subject is something that’s both an observer and an observable. The …
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Apple Event Sandboxing
Background I’ve been working on a small Mac app that runs an AppleScript to pull data out of OmniFocus and visualize it. Problem: it kept coming back with no data. The cause …