I’ve never been much of a forum person myself, but looking back on it now, I realise it’s probably because the barrier to entry has always just seemed so high. And whenever I hit a forum result when searching for something, I find myself wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible. What’s more, as the Discourse team note, the environment hasn’t improved much in a long time.

I was invited to take part in the Discourse beta over the past month or so, and was pleased to see how fresh a platform it is. One of the things which instantly struck me was how wonderfully designed it is; it’s definitely got the Stack Overflow minimalist, big-button-big-font feel to it which really works and helps in a forum context. It’s also got the care and attention to little details that I’ve always loved the Stack Exchange sites for: highlighting particular posts which are linked to on page load; the way replies and quotes in posts are handled; and the obsessive implementation of rigorous curation such as moving posts around between topics and sane post flagging.

What’s more, I’m a huge fan of the conversation scrolling implementation that’s found in threads:

(It’s sublime).

Making the Internet a better place

Discourse seems like a logical progression from ideas implemented and lessons learnt from Stack Exchange, and even the name Discourse feels like a natural extension to the positive-change-for-the-Internet ambition that the Stack Exchange network has strived for: as a long-term listener of the (formerly) Stack Overflow podcast, one of the goals I heard most often (sometimes to the point of propaganda) was the goal to “improve discourse on the Internet”.

I’d encourage you to try Discourse out: you can give it a whirl at try.discourse.org. And as Jeff has finally learnt his lesson, you can engage in Discourse discourse on their meta site. What’s more, if you want to use the Discourse platform, it’s open source and available on GitHub.

As with the way in which Stack Overflow reinvigorated the Q&A platform in 2008, Discourse seems like a fantastic addition to the discussion software genre, and I’m looking forward to see how it improves online discussion.

One of the things I loved about BACON compared to other conferences was how broad the spectrum of developers attending and the talks the speakers made were. It was nice to meet developers with other technical backgrounds aside from my own of primarily Cocoa and Objective-C.

It was a fantastic conference, and as with the other fantastic conferences I’ve been to, I’m always left with that buzzing feeling afterwards: I come away wanting to build or do something great. It really helps me to realign and refocus what I’m doing and gives me inspiration going forward.

I’d never really been able to articulate this feeling before, but I saw one of the other attendees describe it as ‘conference energy’, which I thought was a great description. And it’s contagious:

Conference energy is contagious. My friend’s first thought after recounting #devslovebacon: ‘Fuck, I need to go make something’.

— Alex Rozanski (@alexrozanski) April 14, 2013

I’m heading out to Cupertino at the weekend, and next Monday I start an internship at Apple on the Safari team. Of course, that’s about all I can say.

Work aside, the most interesting experience for me will be seeing what it’s like to live in the States (albeit in a slight bubble) for a few months, and I plan to write about some of my experiences here.

I’m out in California for nearly 3 months, until the end of September. It’d be great to meet up with any fellow iOS/Mac developers or techy/designery people whilst I’m out there – if you’d like to, just get in touch. Anywhere around Cupertino/Santa Clara or the San Francisco area (and anywhere BART-accessible) is good.

• Was fortunate enough to be born into a prosperous and safe part of the world to loving parents.
• Did all that kid stuff.
• Was given two younger sisters.
• Was introduced into the world of programming by my dad¹.
• Learnt HTML, CSS and Javascript².
• Learnt PHP.
• Started playing guitar.
• Endured 7 years at a secondary school I didn’t like, but which did wonders for my education.
• Got into metal³, including some weird phases of listening to black metal and death metal.
• Started learning Objective-C and Cocoa using the fantastic book by Aaron Hillegass.
• Met some great people on Stack Overflow and attended the first Stack Overflow DevDays in Cambridge, UK, where I got my first MacBook signed by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky⁴.
• Met another bunch of fantastic developer friends through NSCoder Night (London) and the London iOS Developer Group.
• Built and released several open-source projects which have been received well, and even included in some well-known applications.
• Attended my first NSConference and was blown away.
• Worked freelance on a font manager by a company that holds 2 Apple Design Awards to its name.
• Got my first iPhone (an iPhone 4).
• Attended a one-week iOS developer training session at Apple in California.
• Visited San Francisco for the first time and fell in love with Alamo Square.
• Found a university I love and that I’m proud to be a student at.
• Met a bunch of talented, interesting and fun people at university who share my interests.
• Built this blog engine (in Objective-C and Cocoa).
• Interned on the Mac Safari team at Apple in California.

I’m sure I’ve missed lots of key moments out, but you get the gist. It’s at times like these that I realise how thankful I should be of the life I have. Thanks to all of you that have been a part of it.

To the next 20 years, ladies and gentlemen.

Although touted as a Mac and iOS developer event, NSConference has evolved in recent years to cover topics more than just development, and have resulted in talks focussed on areas like design and the indie software business. Criticism from last year (although I didn’t attend myself) seems to have been that the list of talks had swung too far the other way, but this year there seemed to be a nice balance talks about software development but also other areas involved in building apps.

The thing I’ve always liked about NSConference is how sincere it feels; you can tell that it’s put on by a great bunch of people who really care about the community and want to hold a fantastic event. It’s not a conference plagued by advertising and sponsorship, and any that’s there is done in a very tasteful, unobtrusive way.

The proof is in the pudding: I always come away from NSConference with a buzz, inspired to build something great. Although incredibly busy lately, I hope that this will be the year that I build and release something of my own.

I’m sure like most other people, the first thing reading the announcement that struck me like a blow to the head: $20 for an app in the Social Networking category – even on the Mac App Store – is pretty much unheard of.

But my initial shock was only because it was something that was novel; different. I was excited because for something of Tapbots' quality, Tweetbot for Mac is charged at a fair price. In the current App Store market, that takes balls.

‘$20?! It’s only a Twitter client!’

One of the recurring arguments I’ve seen following the launch is along the lines of ‘It’s only a Twitter client, and $20 is way too much’. I think that’s a false claim to make generally, and requires consideration on how much you value a native Twitter experience.

Even with the launch of App.net (of which I’m a user), Twitter is still my main social communication medium¹ and I use it most days and make good use of it. As such, on top of the polished product that Tapbots have produced, $20 for an app that I’ll most days or every day is a bargain.

I think this unfortunately exemplifies the throwaway-culture around apps: the 99¢ games which you play for a few days then never launch again and so forth. Apps are by-and-large cheap and plentiful and people see little worth in apps they have, whether or not they’re something they use a couple of times or something they use all the time.

Knowing what you’re getting

Something I’ve noticed when I buy quality software – particularly on the Mac App Store – is that I often feel like I should be giving the developer more money than I am. These are apps such as Reeder or iA Writer which have clearly had lots of effort and thought put into them, and only go for $5 or so. For the quality and level of polish in the end product, a measly $5 feels like an unfair price.

I’ve also come to realise that I like paying for apps, and knowing the relationship with the developer that that entails. I’ve been put off by apps such as Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower (which I really enjoy) because they rely on in-app purchase as a way of generating revenue. I know that the gameplay will often be steered towards buying more in-app purchases, which I know will alter my playing experience. I’d be much happier off paying up-front and having gameplay which was more focused on the game rather than earning revenue.

In short

I’m glad with the decision that Tapbots made in pricing Tweetbot for Mac. I hope this steers other developers who are pushing out quality products to do the same and charge what their apps are worth, and by making a fairer and more sustainable amount of revenue can continue to invest into building great products.

The video is presented in a casual, jovial light backed by playful music and angular 2D graphics, but there’s a sinister undertone throughout, such as the simple statement in relation to sexual reproduction that ‘no two men and no two women can ever do this’, and in the fallacious arguments against gay marriage.

‘For the sake of our children’

The idea that marriage is all about creating families consisting of heterosexual couples for children of these families appears to be the Iona Institute’s main argument and culminates in the parting statement ‘for the sake of our children’.

Their argument is that all children need a ‘loving mum and dad’, and by allowing gay marriage this denies this for children of homosexual couples. Of course this argument doesn’t make sense for several different reasons:

• Gay marriage has nothing to do with having children. It is simply about the marriage of two people of the same sex. Some gay couples will have children, but others won’t. That’s something completely different.
• Earlier in the video, the Iona Institute make the case that ‘[the purpose of heterosexual marriage] is unique and important: to give [the] children the love of their mum and dad in one family’. The sex of parents has nothing to do with how much love they give their children. You can have a family with an apathetic mum and a dad who don’t give much love to their children, or a family consisting of a gay couple who give their children all the love in the world. What’s more, a gay couple and children can still be considered a family unit, just as a family with a heterosexual couple or a single parent can be.
• The statement that all children long for a ‘loving mum and dad’ also doesn’t make sense. I’d argue that children simply yearn for love from parental figures, regardless of their sex.

The whole child-oriented argument against gay marriage presents the idea that it’s wrong for a child to be raised in a family consisting of two male or two female parents. From my own experiences, it’s an uncommon scenario.

But if this is all really ‘for the sake of the children’, the solution to rectify this is not to make propaganda like this which abhors gay marriage, it’s to welcome families with same-sex parents and make it less of a stigma.

‘Not Discrimination’

The brilliant irony in the video of course is in the part which seeks to label the case against gay marriage as non-discriminatory¹:

As can be seen, the second definition they list in grey states that ‘discrimination’ is:

treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor [of a] person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which [the] thing belongs rather on individual merit; racial and religious discrimination.

Surely the argument that a man and woman’s love of a child is valid, but a gay couple’s love is not is exactly what this definition of discrimination states?

‘Marriage’

I still find it shocking that so many people hold these kinds of beliefs and broadcast them so openly, when to me they are so misguided and unaccommodating. It’s also scary how they are hidden behind campaigns such as these which have a friendly and playful façade, which gives them false justification and the impression that there’s nothing wrong with them.

I look forward to the day where we don’t discriminate based on sexuality and we call the legal and social union of two people — regardless of their sexes — simply ‘marriage’.

I know it’s often unfair to blame one’s tools, but I feel that one of the main obstacles that stopped me writing much on my old blog was my blogging platform of choice — Wordpress. Although a powerful and deeply extendable tool, I grew to really dislike Wordpress. Most customisations and tweaks felt really complicated and/or hacky, and I found myself particularly frustrated with its editor interface. Most of the time I ended up writing in an external editor then copying the text into the pseudo-WYSIWYG web-based editor and formatting it correctly, which was rather tedious.

A Simplified Workflow

I’ve also come to really like iA Writer; it’s definitely my favourite text editor and use it both on the Mac and iOS. Its killer feature has to be its simplicity, and looks beautiful on both platforms.

So I built my own blogging engine as a little side project¹ (I know many others already exist), which takes simple text file input (in Markdown, of course) and spits out HTML, which means I can write using whichever editor I like.

I also knew I wanted a new, cleaner design, that would be easy to view and use on mobile devices. I wanted to keep everything lightweight so have styled the site with CSS media queries to be usable on — particularly — iPhone and iPad-sized screens, without having to serve separate pages for different devices.

I like to keep my designs clean and simple and try to make them as easy to use as possible and logically structured which is part of my motivation behind my design decisions. I also opted for a narrow column for the body text on article pages, with a slightly larger text size than normal, both for easier reading. The site is set in the beautiful runda, which I feel has the clarity and cleanliness of Helvetica, but with a bit of character.

Old Blog

For the time being, I’ll keep my old blog up, but I’m not yet certain what I’ll be doing with it in future — however I’ll be doing all my writing here from now on. I’ve moved across and updated information about all my open source projects, which can be found here and all are still up on GitHub.

Following

If you want to read what I’ll be writing, you can subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter — I’m @alexrozanski.

Here are some of my thoughts on why studying a CS degree was the right choice for me:

‘Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio’¹

For me the biggest advantage of my degree so far has been the plethora of topics that I’ve covered that I simply wouldn’t have had the time or inclination to explore otherwise.

My favourite class from this year was Haskell, which — never having used a functional programming language before — was both eye-opening² and pretty fun. It was so different to my normal Objective-C/Cocoa environment and made me think about programming in a completely different way, and it was gratifying to craft beautiful one-line solutions that took advantage of language-level features like lazy-evaluation or little tricks which would never be suitable in any vaguely maintainable shipping codebase. Although I can’t see them being directly applicable to my career, courses such as the Haskell one broadened my experiences and have definitely made me think differently about programming in other languages.

Having had programming and general computer nerdery as hobbies of mine for the last decade or so, I’ve picked up a fair amount of information and it’s pretty much all been self-taught. But learning is a continual process and a large part of why I went into studying a degree was to fill the gaps in my knowledge. I can build a complex Objective-C application or a website with ease, but I know less about areas such as networking and hardware. Being largely self-taught, having formal teaching was also an interesting experience, especially for something like programming which is often quite an isolated activity.

Inspiration from like-minded people

One of the things that slightly intimidated me at the beginning of the year was how incredibly intelligent the other people in my class are. There are people who can knock up AIs and complex mathematical algorithms with apparent ease (things which aren’t my strongest points). The department at Imperial is one of the best in the world³, and it is definitely reflected in the people that are in my year.

However, working alongside other intelligent, like-minded people has been hugely beneficial and a driving force for side-projects and other ideas. It’s also led to many an interesting discussion (often over some form of alcohol) about new ideas and thoughts about the current state, progression and future of the industry. Talking to others with experience with other languages and environments has also been useful and insightful, and I’ve been introduced to languages such as CoffeeScript (and the associated CoffeeScript-SASS-Jade stack) through others in my classes.

Being taught by and chatting to academic staff who have years of experience and often are researchers in their field also makes a great resource, and the quality of teaching is excellent. Seeing some of the projects that PhD students are working on is also interesting, and a personal favourite of mine is game-generating AI ANGELINA, by Michael Cook.

Side-projects

Studying at university also — funnily enough — leads to quite a lot of free time. My average day is usually something from about 10 or 11am until about 4 or 5pm, but this is not filled with back-to-back classes and lectures. We have a fair amount of free time between lectures or during weekends and evenings and this year I’ve done some freelance work on a fairly significant update to Fontcase and written the blog engine for this site, both of which were interesting and fun projects.

Working on projects part-time, as opposed to full-time, can also be quite beneficial, and a degree gives you more time for side-projects than a full-time job would. As you have limited time to work on projects you often make more productive use of the time you’ve got, and coming back to a project after a break with fresh eyes can be really useful in spotting any previous mistakes and bad choices and deciding where and how to proceed.

Group working

One of the other things I hadn’t really had any experience with before was working on coding projects in a group. This is something which Imperial seems to be particularly keen on pushing, and we had two fairly large group projects this year: one, a research project which we had to develop an accompanying website for, and the other an assembler and emulator written in C for a fictitious computer architecture.

The projects were led very well – we were taught about and made to use git for version control. It was my first exposure to activities such as pair programming, and working with others will be a useful skill to develop gradually for work once I graduate.

The bad points

Of course, there are some disadvantages to a CS degree, which include:

• Some first year material can be simplistic if you have prior experience, especially with programming, although this is to be expected as the first year is all about getting everyone on the same page. (Also, lectures aren’t mandatory 😜).
• University is still fairly expensive. However, our year is lucky as we’re the last to have our tuition fees capped at ~£3,000 which remains for the 3 or 4 years we’re here, unlike students starting from Autumn 2012 who will have to pay anywhere up to around £9,000 a year in tuition alone.
• There is, of course, the argument that the 3-4 years spent at university could be spent working somewhere gaining practical experience. However I’m fine with spending these few years getting a formal education first.

To conclude

With the huge amount of resources available online for self-learning, it might be tempting for people who already have programming and other related experience to skip a CS degree, and go straight into work.

But no matter how good you are or how much experience you have there’s always more to learn, and a degree offers lots of ways to explore subject areas you’ve never touched before, that you simply wouldn’t otherwise. Self-taught programming can also lead you into developing bad habits (I’m sure I’ve developed several), and it can be useful to see how peers and those with more experience around you do things to get some perspective and critique your own ways of working.

I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but my experience so far has been fantastic, and I’m looking forward to the next 2 or 3 years ahead of me.