The Journal App Making Journal: Day 40
Five new apps with SwiftUI and Project Catalyst, creative journaling, and continue to journal on Atomic Habits
Continue to journal on three questions everyday in this Journal App Making Journal.
1. What have I learned about app design and development today?
Continue to acquire app design and programming skills through the iOS App Development course on Udemy by Angela Yu and the London App Brewery.
Hands-on coding using SwiftUI today. Amazing.
Until today (about 50% of the cours), the course has taught app development under the framework / interface of UIKit. Today, we tried the newer and better development interface of SwiftUI.
We made 4 mobile apps with SwiftUI. They are: I Am Rich 2, Dicee 2, My Card, and Hacker News.
- The first two are re-makes of projects previously done in UIKit.
- The latter two are new projects today. My Card is about making a digital business card that displays my photo and contacts on one screen. Hacker News is a news feed app off the Y Combinator Hacker News website. I love having my own app about this feed on my phone!
> SwiftUI vs. UIKit
Regarding the difference between UIKit and SwiftUI, SteelKiwi Inc. wrote a great article about the difference here. And I tried to capture my understanding as a beginner in my journal on Day 38.
As I tried on SwiftUI today, it mainly felt like learning to speak the same language in two different accents. I was reminded of the experience learning English as a second language where I was exposed to the British accent first, then the American.
On the one hand, the latter did seem easier to understand somehow, on the other, I was not sure if learning both accents at the same time assisted or hindered as a beginner in English.
However, the module today on SwiftUI was intended only as an introduction to the subject and the absolute “bleeding edge” of iOS development, so the exposure was lovely.
> Project Catalyst
The Hacker News mobile app was additionally able to be turned into a desktop app, within the magic of only a few clicks after finishing the mobile version, thanks to Apple’s Project Catalyst. It was simply brilliant.
Mac Catalyst is a project to unify and merge the development framework for iOS mobile apps and macOS desktop apps. It has been a major strategy for Apple to compete against Android apps and platforms, and an exciting announcement in Apple’s WWDC 2019. The project was previously known in development circles as “Project Marzipan”.
The outcome is improved app user experience across Apple’s devices and platforms, improved app developer experience in code reusability, and improved app developer economics in greater app distributability. These were mentioned in detail two days ago.
A correction however to my previous understanding about SwiftUI is that the code reusability across Apple’s mobile and desktop platforms is a result of Project Catalyst, not SwiftUI.
2. What have I learned about other journal users today?
Continue to look into journal users under the #journaling hashtag on Medium.
The featured journal user today continues to be: Jackie Schwabe
> About Jackie and her 30-day journaling challenge
In September 2019, Jackied wrote a 30-day journaling challenge blog, to look at a range of ideas about how to journal and their benefits. I would divide her ideas into the following 6 areas, and go through each area in the coming week.
- General benefits of journaling: Day 1, 29, and 30;
- Specific ways of journaling > for productivity, planning, learning: Day 2, 3, 13, and 18;
- Specific ways of journaling > for imagination and creativity: Day 5, 24;
- Specific ways of journaling > for regulating moods and emotions: Day 7, 12, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, and 25;
- How to establish the journaling habit: Day 6, 15, 19, 20, 26, and 28;
- Journaling tools and technologies: Day 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 27.
> Key ideas I learned from her today
Yesterday, we looked at the productivity theme. If yesterday was all about non-fictional journaling, today it’s about breaking into the realms of imagination.
On Day 5 and 24, Jackie looked specifically in ways of journaling that give us a “creative outlet”. It’s amazing and could involve the following:
- Drawing, using colours and colour pens, stickers, and washi tapes, gosh, clearly I never thought of that;
- Writing poetry;
- Photo and image collage journaling, like scrapbook making, somewhat returning us to childhood it seems;
- While this may require a larger notebook, it should still be kept portable.
These are definitely practices for the more artistic among us, or for those who intend to actively develope their creativity.
3. What have I learned about journaling products / technologies today?
Continue to look into other journaling products / technologies today.
Featured journaling system today: Assessing the implementation technologies for the popular book, Atomic Habit. This is a follow-up 21-day project after the initial review of the Clear Habit Journal on Day 35. It will end on Day 56.
> Featured ideas from the book > Chapter 4 on becoming aware
- “The process of behavior change always starts with awareness”. We can not change anything we are not aware of. And habits are by nature so automatic they disappear from our awareness, unless we consciously keep a look-out for them or conduct a sort of personal audit.
> Featured lessons from, Habit Academy, the video course > Module 3 on the power of environment
- More exercise today around how to (re)-design our environments so the desirable habits are more easily and automatically accessible and achievable, and undesirable ones are less.
> Using the Clear Habit Journal for my own habit change
- Continue to use the Clear Habit Journal to complete exercises from the video course. Over the last couple of days, the positives from using the Journal have come from the act of writing things down.
- On the other hand, I believe the same effectiveness is achievable through writing in any other notebook as long as it’s consistent and in one place.
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