As soon as I left the hairdresser after my last haircut, I started growing it out. I really hated it. I can't wait to get it past the most awkward growing stage so I can have it cut into a new style.

I've noticed a few posts on Micro.blog today that are clearly related to my post about leaving yesterday (though not sent to me directly). The general gist of these posts is that criticism should be done privately.

I understand that criticism can be tough, and public criticism in particular. In fact, I held back most of yesterday's post for weeks because of this fact. I've held most of these reservations for a while, but I didn't want to share these criticisms because I felt there were other ways I could help improve Micro.blog instead. Leaving the service and sharing my reasons for leaving publicly was a last resort for me. I had attempted to share criticisms and suggestions inside the service and directly with its creators, and I had attempted to take personal action to remedy some of the criticisms I had. When none of this seemed to make any difference, I resorted to sharing my disappointment publicly and leaving the service (to be fair, I haven't quite left yet—I'm still responding to direct mentions about all this, but I've stopped my posts showing up there and will leave when this all dies down).

When I first learned the Kotlin syntax equivalent to Swift's if let I didn't like it as much, but lately I'm finding the Swift version feels a bit more verbose. In Kotlin it's nullableThing?.let { do stuff } vs. Swift's if let unwrappedThing = optionalThing { do stuff }.

It's like we've learned nothing from Twitter. Users who say providing a solid API, clear docs, and third-party dev support would tailor a platform to "a niche elite of tech savvy people" miss the point. Those third-party devs make the experience better for all the other users!

This is a cool idea for making setup closures more succinct. I pass arguments into initialisers most of the time, but for the few times I don't, this could be really handy.

I try hard these days to stick to Gio's advice of making the tiniest change possible when refactoring. I used to move lots of stuff around at once and get into some bad messes.

I've come and gone from Micro.blog several times before. I joined long before the Kickstarter, when barely anyone was there. I tried it again after the Kickstarter, when the community looked more like it does today. And I came back again a few weeks ago for the most fun, if not the longest, period of time I've spent there.

Like many other people, I really like the community on Micro.blog. I like that it feels like a nice, friendly place to hang out, and that mostly people post content thoughtfully, even if it's short or just a photo. While I recognise that these things aren't true in every case, I've been lucky to enjoy mostly positive interactions with the community, and have always been made to feel welcome.

Josh has been trying to convince me to take up web development for ages. Have to say, now that I'm trying it, the speed at which I can see my changes is really cool.

Learning some Python today. Dynamic typing is a real shock to my system.

Playing with a different look for my expense tracking app on Android today.

I often think I shouldn't start so many new side projects without finishing any, but it's actually a really good way to learn new tech. Lots of new projects means repeating the basics over & over, which helps me remember and understand them.

The park near our house is bustling with dog walkers on weekdays, but dead at the same time on a weekend. How are these people making their dogs sleep-in on the weekend? Jez expects a walk at the same every day of the week.

Oooh JetPens has 2019 Jibun Techo planners in stock. I still haven't decided if next year I'll stick with a Jibun Mini or switch to a Hobo Weeks or Cousin.

I miss the halcyon days when my puppy refused to go to the toilet anywhere but home.

Some good ideas here for using Kotlin higher-order functions.

I recently heard a talk about using MVP on iOS and really liked the idea. This is a good look at how Reddit is incrementally moving to MVP.

You can check my progress on version 0.0.8 of Pico in this pull request on GitHub, if you're curious.

My last post about using Android vs. iOS was about 18 months ago. It feels like time for an update.

At the end of 2017, after having my Google Pixel for just over a year, I switched to an iPhone X. As an iOS developer, I felt my work was better when I used my own apps every day, and I'd long despised the physical iPhone home button, which the X did away with.