Author Archives: Layne McIntyre

posted

October 16, 2017

Preventing Bloated View Controllers with Coordinators in iOS

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A cartoon image depicting a coordinator pattern.

Overstuffed View Controllers: a problem that is universally despised by iOS developers the world over. Who hasn’t had their eyes glaze over while staring down debugging a 3000 line VC? View Controllers can control so much information, and Apple seems to have very few opinions on where specific logic should go. They give us the decision making power. How can we prevent against this annoying problem and modularize our apps better? Model–View–View Model (MVVM) can certainly help with this, but ultimately leaves routing to View Controllers, which doesn’t make the most sense. This is where a Coordinator comes in.

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posted

November 17, 2016

Beacons, iOS and You

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Photo of beacon

What are beacons?

a) A tiny piece of plastic.
b) A low energy bluetooth device.
c) An emerging technology with numerous applications.
d) All of the above.

If you guessed all of the above, you would be correct! Beacons are an IoT technology that is deceptively simple and small but packs a potentially large punch for app developers looking for new and interesting ways to engage their customers.

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posted

April 22, 2016

The Importance of Good Posture for Software Developers

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A photo of a cartoon man with symptoms of iHunch.

Posture, defined as the position of one’s body while sitting or standing, is something most developers take for granted. The cliche of the programmer hunched over their desk typing away on their laptop is alive and well in many offices. What, exactly, is the problem with poor posture? Is the job necessarily tied to poor back and neck health? What are the long term effects of poor posture? Is there a way to avoid pain down the road?

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posted

December 15, 2015

Benchmarking Intel i5 & i7 Processors

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What is benchmarking?

Benchmarking is the process of measuring performance for a piece of technology against other pieces of technology. Typically, processors are benchmarked by running programs and software that heavily taxes the system. This allows the processor to truly shine (or, possibly, the opposite). For the purposes of this post, the i5 and i7 processors’ performance were measured in five different categories, each using one test:

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