Today I received a sizable update for the alpha of TextMate 2 which I use as my mainline programming editor. The move from build 9495 to build 9503 (today’s) took a few months, but it looks like there were a sizable number of nice little changes.
Go ahead and click the above link to see a list of the changes pushed. Good to see development continue.
It is usually a good idea to have a plan, of sorts, in place when you head out to try to do something. Learning iOS development shouldn’t be any different.
So here is my current roadmap-wish thing that I’m probably not going to stick to and probably won’t help me one bit … but I’m going to put this out here anyway in the vain hope that maybe having it published, even here, will help me stick to things more.
The the two on the list are really part of the same thing and I am hoping the update will be out before I get there. One thing missing, and I’ll probably add it to the end, is a good Objective-C book that I want to look at.
Everything I am going to work with needs to be available on at least the iPad and the Mac in electronic form (and they all are), and they follow (somewhat) a progression from C to iOS app. I’m hoping to build my first app after or during item two and then continue from there into more dangerous (and fun) water.
We’ll see what happens, but right now, I need to dig into C.
Looking at my account at DNSimple, I have something like 5 domain names that are just sitting idly by, not dong anything in particular, and a number of sites that are currently up-and-running but that I haven’t done anything new with in a while and probably won’t do anything with for a long time.
For some reason, this has been and is weighing heavily on my mind and my psyche. Having things perpetually “on the back burner” tends to bash around inside my head, popping up at inopportune times and causing all sorts of issues. I’ve had some issues sleeping, my mood has deteriorated, I’ve had problems focusing on projects … and the list goes on. I’m not going to blame the number of “balls in the air” solely for this, but it is something to be aware of.
So it is time to do a number of things to try to help myself out of this extended rut:
Personally, as I sit here, I think that #6 is going to be the one hardest for me to accomplish and the one that will do the most good in the end. Everything above will have some sort of effect on me, but the last fine, actually finishing something, will get some momentum going again.
Black Pixel has been getting a lot of airtime recently, especially after one of Apple’s Developer Relations people decided to head over and join them.
Well, I have picked up one of their apps this past week, Kaleidoscope, to help me when working with merges. It is billed as a file comparison app for the Mac, but it can also take a look at changes in whole folders, help you view the visual changes in an image, and look at text files. It integrates with Git and many 3rd party apps and I have liked it so far.
It is available on the Mac App Store (you’ll find the link on their site), but you will have to pay for it. Otherwise, if you want to try, you can find a 15-day trial on their site as well. Why not give it a shot?
I still use TextMate 2 as my editor-of-choice.
Recently the pace of the updates has increased and some semi-major changes are being released into the open.
Build r9345 has this in the release notes:
File browser has a new navigation bar. This is work in progress. You can find most actions of the old bar in the Go menu (where you can also see the key equivalents). Presently missing is “Show Hidden Items”, a toolbar below the file browser will soon appear.
And it’s true!
It is nice to see some of the visual refreshes coming into the editor. I’m waiting to see what they decide to do with the toolbar at the bottom and whatever else they might have in store. TextMate 2 has been the beneficiary of opening up its source to the world on GitHub.
