Hacker News: brantonb

New comment by brantonb in "Native Instant Space Switching on macOS"

brantonb — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:22:43 +0000

This isn’t unique to Apple. The Windows developers were very vocal about a full screen start menu in Windows 8 being a bad change. We were told that we weren’t allowed to talk about it anymore on the large mailing list about the product. The decision had been made and complaints would no longer be read or responded to.

New comment by brantonb in "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons"

brantonb — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:58:52 +0000

> In the early iOS beta, the new tab button was at the top of Safari, as far away from your thumbs as it could be.

It’s relatively recent in iOS history that Safari’s address bar is at the bottom. There’s a setting to move it back to the top. This specific example is probably as innocent as a default getting accidentally changed during the development process.

New comment by brantonb in "Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-tests"

brantonb — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 04:42:21 +0000

They list sponsors on their website: https://ladybird.org/#sponsors

Disconnecting from Discord

brantonb — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:42:08 +0000

Article URL: https://omglol.news/2025/09/18/disconnecting-from-discord

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291051

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by brantonb in "Matterport walkthrough of the original Microsoft Building 3"

brantonb — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:09:24 +0000

I definitely went into the wrong restroom a couple of times after an office move to the opposite side of building 9.

New comment by brantonb in "Nobody cares"

brantonb — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 03:47:53 +0000

Enough people use 867-5309 as their grocery loyalty card's phone number that it's often got savings available at the gas pump. Use the local area code. It works great for filling up rentals while traveling, too.

New comment by brantonb in "The 'Return to Office' Lies"

brantonb — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 17:46:41 +0000

I was simply providing a single data point. Please feel free to use that to support your theory or ignore it.

New comment by brantonb in "The 'Return to Office' Lies"

brantonb — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 20:40:43 +0000

From a pure numbers perspective, if you work 40 hours/week and commute 3.5 unpaid hours/day, then dropping the commute and taking a 50% pay cut results in only a 28% hourly pay cut and an extra 17.5 hours in your week.

And let’s not forget the gas and car maintenance savings. I reduced my annual driving by about 4,000 miles. My car will also not have to be replaced as soon. I’m also eating cheaper because I’m more likely to make my own lunch rather than eating out. I’m sure there are more expenses like this that add up.

If I could make the finances work, I think I’d take that deal. (I’d be unlikely to sign up for that commute in the first place.)

New comment by brantonb in "The 'Return to Office' Lies"

brantonb — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 20:24:27 +0000

I have data for myself. My annual driving dropped from roughly 9,000 miles to 5,000 miles when I switched to WFH. In addition to avoiding the daily back and forth, I’d often make a detour on my evening commute to get groceries for the next couple of days. Now I plan things out better and make fewer shopping trips, as well.

I wonder if I could negotiate cheaper car insurance rates. I’m driving far less and on safer streets, rarely getting on a major highway.

New comment by brantonb in "Comic Mono"

brantonb — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 04:04:28 +0000

There is a “Comic Code Coding Essentials“ bundle for $30, licensed for up to 5 users. Unfortunately, it’s at the very bottom of the page so it’s easy to miss.

New comment by brantonb in "Swift 6"

brantonb — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:24:10 +0000

I think your link got cut off. Here’s the direct link to the section on when to use typed throws. I hadn’t read this before, and it changes how I’ll approach them. Thanks for pointing it out!

https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo...

Code Fellows has ceased operations

brantonb — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 05:04:03 +0000

Article URL: https://www.codefellows.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41053774

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by brantonb in "Your Company's Problem is Hiding in Plain Sight - High Work-In-Progress (WIP)"

brantonb — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 13:51:56 +0000

If you want a more software focused take on it, there’s The Phoenix Project.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-pro...

New comment by brantonb in "Conditional Git Configuration"

brantonb — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 05:46:27 +0000

I didn't want to have to organize my work and personal repos using a directory structure, so I use matching on the remote instead. Since my job uses a GitHub organization, I'm able to conditionally include a config file that uses my work email in any GitHub repo under that organization.

I wrote it up here, if that sounds useful: https://www.brantonboehm.com/code/conditional-git-config/

New comment by brantonb in "9 years of Apple text editor solo dev"

brantonb — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 20:27:26 +0000

At my last job, we slowly started adopting Swift in 2016 by writing some unit tests with it. Once we felt comfortable and established some coding conventions, we started adding some production code. By the time I left in fall 2023, we were well over 50% Swift without any big rewrites of Obj-C code. Almost all the new code came in as Swift because developers enjoyed writing it over Obj-C.

Sounds like you rely on Categories a lot. Check out Extensions in Swift. [1]

There are some limitations (e.g., Swift enums lose a lot of their power if they're needed in Obj-C) but overall the interop is great. I don't remember anything in UIKit that couldn't be done with Swift. And if you're dealing with unicode text, doing things in Swift may make your life much easier.

[1] https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/documentation/the-swift-pr...

New comment by brantonb in "9 years of Apple text editor solo dev"

brantonb — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 17:53:41 +0000

I totally understand that you have to play the game, even if I think the game makes search results worse. Appreciate your consideration and the post itself. (I'm an iOS dev that's made the jump from Obj-C to Swift and now from UIKit to SwiftUI.)

New comment by brantonb in "9 years of Apple text editor solo dev"

brantonb — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 17:51:51 +0000

Yes, I'm asking for a bit of work to be done so that I can read their future posts like this. I spend money on well-crafted indie software but typically only after following the author for a while. I'd like to remain engaged and was offering a suggestion on how the author could make that happen.

The current RSS feed is not useful for humans. I'm not into SEO, so maybe RSS feeds are taken into account. You can publish multiple feeds, though.

New comment by brantonb in "9 years of Apple text editor solo dev"

brantonb — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 17:29:04 +0000

This post was great, so I added the RSS feed to my reader and I almost instantly removed it. I always knew those "7 Best Writing Apps for iPhone (2024)" posts were only there for SEO, but seeing a post from 2021 with that title is frustrating. This post appears to be the only non-SEO-related post in the feed.

Not trying to take anything away from the author: the app and this post look great. But consider doing more writing like this and breaking them out into a dedicated, non-SEO feed. I'd subscribe to that in a heartbeat.

New comment by brantonb in "9 years of Apple text editor solo dev"

brantonb — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 16:54:11 +0000

> For instance, the NSPopover is a good candidate for bubbles that hint at stuff in the Mac app. An iOS counterpart sadly does not exist, so no bubbles in the iOS app.

Ignoring popover presentations in UIKit, there’s also a new TipKit framework in iOS 17, but it’s Swift-only.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/TipKit

The author has done a great job while remaining in Obj-C. I’m really curious how long they can avoid Swift, keep the native experience, and offer new features in the platforms.

New comment by brantonb in "Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?"

brantonb — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 23:18:28 +0000

20 years ago, I was a college kid who built a running log website as an alternative to keeping paper records. My college cross-country team lived all over the country, so this let us keep each other accountable during summer training. It was fairly early in the Internet, before GPS watches and not many runners had heart rate straps. It got featured in Women's Health and Runners' World (UK edition) magazines.

When I interviewed at Microsoft my senior year, this gave me a ton to talk about. It was real experience building a product and having customers. I could answer questions with something real and different than the other candidates. I know I bombed two of my interviews, but I ended up doing 7 interviews on the day and getting an offer.

The website is still around, but I haven't done anything to it other than delete the production log that fills up the server disk occasionally in the last 15 years. I don't know why anyone uses it, there are much better options. I still run and I certainly don't use it. But the server bills are cheap, so it lives on.