Side Project Spotlight Podcast

After a brief retrospective about our last app, Kanji Love, and a shout out to the recently departed Release Notes podcast, the team starts a discussion about our next project, which looks like it’ll be focused on Augmented Reality. First, we ask ourselves, what is the relationship between AR, VR, and the “Metaverse” concept? Then we read the tea leaves of Apple’s APIs to make an educated guess about future hardware and types of applications that would be useful to build. [More Info]

It’s release day! Kanji Love is in the App Store! In this season finale episode, we discuss the story behind the app’s name as well as some of the final bug fixes and tasks we had to complete. Then, you can listen in to the moment we made the app live in the store! Finally, we discuss some ideas for next season. Don’t worry, Side Project Spotlight WILL RETURN! [More Info]

We are in the endgame now! Kotaro has refined the UI while Aaron has updated our Core Data stack and Steve got Notifications working! All the pieces are together and we basically have a feature complete 1.0 app! Now we are entering into the final stress test, debugging, and polishing stages. In this episode we discuss the promise and current limitations of Xcode Cloud, provide an overview of the App Store submission process and steps we need to complete, and worry out loud about whether Swift UI conditionals are a good idea or not. [More Info]

Sprint 4 is over and we are entering the home stretch. Kotaro got the swipe mechanic working, Aaron got so much done, he started adding features, and Steve ran into issues trying to build a Notifications UI. The trio discuss Git branches and merging strategies and then spend the bulk of the episode diving into SwiftUI architecture in general and specifically regarding the app. Finally, in a segment that is the nightmare of project managers everywhere, new features are discussed! [More Info]

Sprint 3 is over and Kotaro has made progress on the UI with a complete app skeleton now linked together, but is still working on the core swipe animation. Meanwhile, Steve found notifications a little harder to setup in a SwiftUI environment than expected, but got the basic plumbing working when he wasn’t editing the podcast. Aaron is the Sprint MVP as he updated the data managers so that Kanji can be retrieved from the database with ease and user stats saved on demand. [More Info]

Sprint 2 is done and we have data! In this episode, we check-in on our goals for the sprint and discuss what got done, what didn’t, and some interesting issues that came up along the way. Now that we have Kanji data in the Core Data database, we can shift focus to building the UI for the app and notifications for next time. Follow-up from last sprint: Wireframes and prototype UI Kanji database parsed into JSON Core Data stack setup Everyone get the app built and run on their watches Look into how notifications might work Get a podcast website setup Steve Got podcast website done No notifications Aaron Got subset of data parsed into Core Data (3,000 kanji! [More Info]

Our first sprint encountered some hiccups and we are off to a slow start, but progress has been made! This week, we have some follow-up about changes to our initial App Store Connect environment, describe how we setup the podcast, and spend the majority of the meeting talking about data sources, structures, and UI. Topics include: Switching to an App Store Connect Team account for development Podcast infrastructure setup with Anchor. [More Info]

For our inaugural season, we (Kotaro, Steve, and Aaron) are building a watchOS Kanji flashcard app and documenting our journey. This week, we tackle the initial project infrastructure setup and talk next steps. Topics include: Github project setup and .gitignore App Store Connect Users New up a Xcode Project from a template What is this app all about? Initial wireframes Kanji database options [More Info]