Can you Vision Pro in Objective-C with Danielle Lewis

Episode Transcript
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Leo Dion (host) (00:00):
Hey folks.

(00:00):
Before we begin today's episode,I wanted to let you know I'm
open to new opportunitiesthis summer and fall of 2024.
If you're looking for someone who hasan expertise in swift, whether it's
iOS, watch, os, tv, vision, Mac Os, orServer side, swift, reach out to me.
You can find me@brightdigit.com and youcan reach out to me there, or you can

(00:24):
just email me at leo@brightdigit.com.
Thank you so much, and I hope youenjoy the rest of today's episode.
Welcome to anotherepisode, empower Apps.
I'm your host, Leo Deanne.
Today I am joined by Danielle Lewis.
Danielle, thank you so muchfor coming on the show.

Danielle Lewis (guest) (00:44):
Yeah.
Thank you for having me.

Before we begin, I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself.

All right.
Yeah.
I'm Danielle.
I just started learning Swift about ayear ago, so I'm a native iOS developer
currently doing my first internship.
Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

How did you get into software development?

Yeah, actually it's something I had been
interested in for a while, but veryintimidated by to be honest, there
just weren't a lot of people thatI saw who looked like me, who were
successful as a, at this growing up.
But a family friend actually reachedout and encouraged me to start learning.
So I did.
And then after WWDC last year.
I fell in love with the ideaof the Vision Pro and decided I

(01:26):
wanted to start learning Swift.

Awesome.
So now have you been mostly doing VisionPro stuff or anything else in Swift?

Yeah.
Yeah, mostly iOS, honestly.
I.

Okay.

I'm currently trying to get more into AR Kit
and reality Kit, so I'm doing somecourses right now trying to learn
those frameworks to be able to usemore of the hardware of Vision Pro
and give people more 3D experiences.

so tell me a little bit about what were some of the
hurdles getting into iOS developmentand what did you learn on the way,

yeah, it's hard.
Like coding is hard.
Coming from not havingany experience, but I.
Honestly, the community hasbeen so incredible to me.
I made a Twitter early on, I was doingPaul Hudson and Sean Allen courses
and both of them very much stressed.
Get on Twitter, the deafcommunity's amazing.
Make sure that youshare what you're doing.

(02:24):
So I took that advice.
I.
Any hurdle that I had, anyobstacle or roadblock that I
faced, I just asked questions.
I asked for help, andpeople came to help me.
So that was incredible.
And probably the best thing thatI learned was leveraging the
community and building that network.

So I wanna talk a bit about your experience with Vision Os.
Did you start with iOS andthen go into Vision Os?

Yeah.
I started with iOS.
I started with a hundred days ofswift ey on hacking with swift.com,
and shortly after, about six monthslater, decided that I wanted to.
Try to make a Vision Pro app.
This was a little bit beforerelease and I actually made four
very simple single window utilityapps for Vision Os and got those

(03:12):
on the store before release day.
So that was cool.

Okay, so what were the obvious big differences
developing for Vision OS versus iOS?

Yeah, it was mostly just how people interact
with the applications and design.
So making sure that, the way thatpeople move through your application
was intuitive for the platform.
That was the biggest difference.
Swift UI makes it so easyto go from one to the other.
Everything is pretty much the same.
A text box is still a text box.

(03:44):
A button is still a button.
So everything was very much builtin to where if you had a tab view in
an iOS app, you could have that sametab view and it would automatically
be different based on the platformthat you were building it on.
So I thought that was great and cool.

What were some cool things that you could do in Vision OS
development that you can't do in iOS?

Yeah, I think honestly it was the design language.
I think the aesthetic, just theglass and just the way that they
have everything set up wouldbe a lot harder to do in iOS.
It's very easy and simple tomake a gorgeous Vision OS app to
where it might take a lot morework and a lot more knowledge

(04:25):
and experience to do so in iOS.

How was like interacting with your app different with
the gestures and the eye focused stuff?
Was that a challenge?
'cause I'd always be worried about ifI'm doing it right on Vision os, if

yeah.
The cool thing again iseverything is pretty much built
in apple makes it extremelysimple with Swift UI to where I.
I didn't really have to worryabout coding anything to
make the eye tracking work.
It just does, out of the box.
They have their components, you haveyour text fields, your text views.
All of your views areautomatically adapted for the

(05:03):
platform when you build for it.
So that made it super easy tomake the switch over from iOS.

Are there like different ways of arranging your windows
or setting up your windows in your app

Yeah.

visions?

Yeah.
So I really only did single, I'veonly done one app that has multiple
windows, but it was pretty muchfree flowing and up to the user.
You can push like a newwindow and they can move it to
wherever they want to move it.
I'm not personally sure.
I don't have experience to know if youcan set up windows in different ways
or in different layouts in that way.

Yeah.
What other do you have any stories oranecdotes about some aha moments you
had developing for the Vision Pro?

Let's see.
Aha moments.
I think.
One of the big ones was as I spokebefore, just how easy it is to make
a absolutely gorgeous application.
As somebody who is still developing inthe simulator, I don't own a vision pro.
It was really cool to see what.

(06:10):
In code and in practice wasjust a pretty simple app.
Turned out to be absolutely gorgeous.
So I made a app, most recent appI released is called Vinyl Vision.
It's a dis cos native clientfor vision os such you can
view your dis collection.
And just seeing that and howbeautiful it was, how great album art

(06:30):
looked, even just in the simulatorwas definitely like wow to me.

So now that you've been developing for the Vision Pro, have
you noticed anything that you're like,oh my gosh, this is better suited for
the Vision Pro rather than the iPhone?
When it comes to developing new apps,

yeah, for sure.
So in my most recent app thatI released, vinyl Vision, I
have some really cool ideas.
Like I would really love for usersto be able to set up a 3D record
player, pull your records from yourdigital collection, and actually
place them on your 3D record player.
Things like that, that aren'tpossible on the iPhone.
It really opens up a whole new worldof user interactions with your apps.

(07:08):
I think it's really cool.
I.

Was there anything from Dub dub that you're like
blown away by and you're nowinterested in building vision os?
Let's start with Vision Os andVision OS two, for instance.

Most of what I was blown away by in Vision OS
two isn't necessarily like developertools, but it's more so ways that.
Us as users can interact with itor us as developers can use it
like the ultra wide monitor space.
I thought that was the coolest thingthat came out of Vision Os for sure.
I'm really hoping to be able to get, I.

(07:41):
More like camera access.
I saw a really cool vision osWWDC video on a drawing app.
So they were like drawing in

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought that was really awesome.
Being able to do stuff likethat is something I'm hoping
to learn as I dive more into arkit and reality kit right now.

What are you finding is like the biggest challenge
with AR kit and reality Kit?

Math.
As somebody who, as somebody whoisn't really, you know trained as a
developer, self-taught I come froma completely, different background.
Trying to learn how to code and howto program and all of that on top of
now having to learn, linear algebra3D space calculus, how things.

(08:27):
How things move, physics stuff likethat is probably the biggest challenge.
But I'm excited.
It, it's been really cool.
It's definitely what blew me awayabout Division Pro, so I'm willing
to learn it and I'm excited.

Making it sound like it's easy to develop for the Vision
Pro, and you're like, not easy, butif you already know iOS, going to
Vision Pro isn't that much harder.
There's gotta be some stuff withthe 3D interface that you need
to know about Vision Pro or maybethings that you can do in Vision
Pro that you can't do in iOS thatmakes it slightly more challenging.

(09:04):
It sounds like they make it easyto design an easy app, but what
if you wanted to do stuff like.
3D model record player, there'sgotta be some more advanced stuff
that you have to do in Swift ui,

yeah, I mean I just don't have too much experience with
it myself to be able to speak on it.
But yeah, like it was easyfor me to develop easy apps
'cause that's what I was doing.
I was doing very simple single screenedwindow app applications, which is
incredibly simple to do coming from,any type of Swift UI experience.

And then you said, did you say you had built
an app with multiple windows?

Yeah.
Yeah.
In vinyl vision, youcan tap on a record.
It'll bring up the track list.
It'll bring up record notes.
It'll bring up the photos.
You can tap on a photo.
It'll bring up anotherwindow with a really large
human size, life size photo.
So in that sense it, you're,it links to other windows.

Okay.
Is that just a flag you canthen set next code or, okay.
Okay, cool.
'cause I know you could dothat with iPads, so I assume
it's basically the same idea.
What,

Danielle Lewis (guest): it's pretty much the same. (10:09):
undefined
API.

okay.
Was there anything elsethat came out from dub dub
that was of interest to you?

Yeah, a lot of the Apple intelligence
stuff looks incredible to me.
Especially, the way that we're gonna beable to use AI and Xcode now, I think
that's gonna be, that's gonna enable awhole new, generation of developers to.
Make swift, which is already a fairlyapproachable language, even more
approachable for more people, which issomething I'm incredibly excited about,

(10:39):
even as somebody who's still learning,like that's gonna be game changing for

Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm.

yeah, for sure.

looked at Xcode 16 at all?

A little bit.
I downloaded the beta because I'mtrying to do, like I said, I'm working
through a, a AR kit reality kit demo,and part of the WWDC videos I was
watching, some of the APIs are only forthe 16 beta, so I did have to download

Because I notice, sorry, I've started doing a lot
of work in 16 beta and I do.
So they do have the language modelstuff for Swift already there.
And it's interesting, it's a littlebit, I would say it's better than
what they had before, but not quitewhat you'd get from was it copilot?
Where it's like a li a little bit morelimited to like you have provide and

(11:28):
what Apple provides which is good.
'cause privacy is an important thing.
So that's interesting to me.
Yeah.
I kind of hope, I hope that it,like it gets better and that we
get to see more of what Apple wantsus to do with these code bases.
Because I assume that's the idea, right?
Is like we had, we took, we trainedthe model on Apple code and tutorial,

(11:50):
so that for like me, the user is gonnaknow, oh, this is what I'm supposed to
do with this view modifier or whatever.
That's what I'm hoping for.

Yes, same.

Just getting into it.
Did you ever try using stuff likechat, GPT or any of the AI stuff
for your development workflow?

Danielle Lewis (guest): Abso, absolutely. (12:08):
undefined
Like I said, I just startedlearning a year ago.
It's been a massive help to me,especially in the very beginning
because my first app I everbuilt was like a closed social
network for my staff at work and.
Doing that, after I started on thatproject a month into learning and
there is absolutely no way that Iwould've gotten that done without

(12:29):
the help from both the community andresources and tools like chat, GPTI.

amongst the other tools that you have?

Yeah, I still use it to this day.
If I have a API I'm working with,I'll just throw in a sample response
and say, Hey, I need a model for

Yeah.
Okay.

me so much time, like typing out an entire, data model.
It's things like that.
Just boilerplate things that aresimple that are also time consuming.
It really helps with, with stuff like

And if it's something that can be a pattern, like you said,
you show, you said, here's the response.
Give me a model.
Yeah.
That's perfect stuff for language model.
So yeah where I found it is, I don'tknow if you've seen this with Vision Pro
or Reality Care or AR Kit, where I seeit run out is like when you have a very
specific API that you need help with.

(13:23):
I don't know about you, but likeI I've been working with some
stuff with networking and it just.
It hallucinates all the time.
And it's yeah, thislooks like Apple code.
This looks like the way youwould do it on an Apple API,
but it's not how it works and itdoesn't really fix my problem.
Do you get stuff like that?

Absolutely.
That's why I stoppedusing it for those things.
I'll go to people in the communitywho've worked with it before and
I get much better results that

Okay.

But for simple things, like we said it's
much easier to trust and rely on it

Yeah, here's a CSV file.
Turn it into Jason.
Stuff like that.
It's like perfect.
What were some developer videos youwatched this year that you're like,
this is something I want to try out?
This.

Yeah, so I watched some of Swift testing.
I've been learning, more about testingand just writing testable code.
So SWIFT testing looks likea really cool step up from,
what we had before the XCET.
So yeah that's something I'mreally excited to get into.
I haven't watched, too manyof the WWDC videos yet.
Mostly just.
The, like X code, the swift assiststuff, and then SWIFT testing.

(14:30):
But I've been trying to watchmore of the vision ota One thing
that I did, I do notice is likeI'm used to, going, watching a
tutorial and tutorial will walk youthrough how to build the project.
But Apple's, WWDC videosare not that at all.

No, no.

Danielle Lewis (guest): It's been interesting to. (14:45):
undefined
They do a really good job ofintroducing you to what's new and
what they're doing, but they'renot necessarily going through
here's how you build this project.

They sometimes have the sample projects that they
update every so often, but yeah.
I, this, the thing that I'vestruggled with is, and I don't
know at the time of the releaseof this episodes, it'll still be
true, but just APIs that I'm lookingforward to aren't quite ready yet.
And it's okay, I can'treally do anything with
this because it's not even.

(15:16):
We're at beta two here,and I still can't do it.
So that's been thebiggest struggle for me.
And then of course, all thestuff with swift concurrency
for sure with Swift six.
That's been a big thing that likeI'm still, I feel like I've been
working on it for a year and I'm stillworking on it even after dubbed up.
So it's yeah, I'm stillwrapping my head around that.

Danielle Lewis (guest): I have to begin, but yes. (15:39):
undefined

I have to be.
Yeah, take your time.
Take your time.
Trust me.
I wanted to hop back a little bit.
So did you get intosoftware development?
Was it like the Apple stuff they gotyou started on it or was there some
other stuff you had done before?

Yeah, I started doing, there's a University
of Helsinki course it's called Java.
I think it's massive online open course.
It's free, it's online, andit walks you through Java.
I was reading a lot of feedback.
I did a lot of research and wantingto get into software development and
Java seemed to be a really popularand good language to start out with.

(16:17):
So I was just doing like consoleprojects and Java until I saw WWDC last
year and immediately switched over toSwift and haven't looked back since.

Do you miss Java?

No.

Yeah,

No, not at all.

I have done very little Java and I'm not a big fan of Java.
Like I am not, I think there's a lot ofgreat programming languages out there.
Java's done on my list ofgreat programming languages.
Just, yeah, I've that's funnythat you started with that.
I could see how that would bea, that would be a good job.
That would be a good resume builder.

(16:53):
But I'm not sure I'd wannawork at that company.
So yeah.
But what was the thing that youwere like, oh my gosh, swift is so
much better than this Java stuff

Oh my goodness.
It's like plain English, it was so funto work with and learn because I didn't
feel like I was like typing gibberish.
It was very readable.
It was very approachable and thingsjust made sense, especially with
swifty YI mean, if I want texton the page, I write text and
I put the text, it just simple.

(17:26):
I just, I love swift.
Love it.

Maybe now that's like a good segue to talk about
the other thing you're working on.
Should we do it

Mm-Hmm.

all right?
So you're now picking up yourthird programming language.
Now, is this

I guess, yeah.
Yeah.

People may have heard of it.
It's called Objective C Danielle, YI.

I got an internship with Disney for the
summer, so I'm working with them.
And it was actually supposed tobe a backend internship, so I
was supposed to be working withJava, PHP Go, stuff like that.
But the team I'm working withgot assigned a iOS project
and so I was super excited.
I'm the only iOS developer on the team.
I wasn't expecting to be doingiOS, so it was a blessing.

(18:12):
I was super excited and ecstaticabout it, but I found out.
Very shortly after that, the project iswritten entirely in objective C and UI
kit, which are two things I've avoidedthis entire past year of learning.

Here you are doing Vision Pro and Swift with concurrency
and they're like, here we got a iPhoneSE model first model with a home button
and we need it working in objective C.
Yeah.
Great.

Yeah, it's been, honestly, it's been fun though.
So Paul Hudson, again, I'm,I mentioned his name a lot so
far, but incredible educator.
He has a book called ObjectiveC for Swift Developers.
So in that book, I'm using thatto just learn objective c, learn
a lot of the ax changes and stufflike that to help me do my job.

(19:01):
But the book is great because itteaches you a lot of the history
of where things in Swift came from.
It helps, put two and two together.
So things like how integersworked and how, the.
The past of integers.
32 versus 62 bit architectureand how that changed what
we could do with integers.
Like all this really fun,like factual history of the

(19:23):
language that I'm learning.
It's actually a lot more funthan I thought it would be.
It's really not as bad.
So I'm actually enjoying it so far.
I would never do it overswift, absolutely never.
But it's not the nightmarethat I expected it to

So you don't have to answer all these questions,
but I'm gonna ask anyways.
Which app is this?
If you mind me asking?

Yeah.
I'm not sure that I'mallowed to speak about, yeah.
Mm-Hmm.

I didn't think so.
I figured I'd ask.
Yeah, 'cause I can't youdon't have to answer this.
You can.

Mm-Hmm

Hype, do poker face here.
But yeah, I would imagine it'sprobably not the streaming app,
because that's been around long.
Alyssa's built on all the olderstuff, so Yeah, I, I don't know I'm
sure Disney has, people don't knowthat how much Disney's into tech,
but they are into tech quite a bit.
Like even when Walt ran the company,they were into tech doing all

(20:14):
sorts of stuff with animation that.
Was pretty cutting edge yeah.
I'm not surprised.
Yeah, I had a, so I'mgonna plug my own stuff.
I did an episode with GrahamLee about objective C and
just the history of that.
And that was really hereally knew his stuff.
And like the part about howlike computer industry of

(20:36):
the nineties, for instance.
I was much more concerned with beingable to rewrite code as it's running.
And that's what the power ofobjective C was back then.
And Swift now in the 2020s, right?
We're all into like staticallytyped, compile, break it, compile
time, don't break it runtime.
And so they, it's okay, now Iunderstand, and this is why people

(20:59):
call, I think a lot of objective c.
Developers don't like Swiftbecause it's so strict.
It's no, it has to be this type.
It has to be this because we wantthings to break at compile time.
We don't want 'em to break at runtime.
Whereas like in objective C,it was like, oh, who cares?
If it's nil, you just check if it's niland that's how you do it at runtime.
So it makes total it's interesting, thedifferent perspective, like you can.

(21:21):
can love or hate both languages orhate both languages, but they're
different for different reasons,for different times of the industry.
And so that, that's super helpful.
Are you doing you said theapp is all an objective.
Is it like, are they like,has to stay in objective C
or keep writing an objectiveseat, don't change anything, or

Yeah.
It's an internship,

yeah.

Yeah, I'm only there for a short amount of time
it's an internal app it's not anythingguest facing, so it's really not a huge
priority for, I'm the only developerworking on it in this gigantic company.
Yeah, I'm not, I don't have any, plansright now to, switch it over to Swift.

Yeah, I mean are you ever oh man, this
would just be easier in Swift.
Can we write like a bridgingheader and then do it that way?
Do you have that ability orare you just eh, I'm just gonna
keep it in obstructive sea andnot try to rock the boat here.
You know what I mean?

Danielle Lewis (guest): yeah, no, totally. (22:11):
undefined
And I would have that ability, butI'm really using this as a learning
opportunity to learn objective C.
Like I was not gonna dothis on my own, I promise.
So I wanna learn and get as muchexposure to objective C while I
have this opportunity as possible.
Yeah I'm just going with it.

So the other thing I was gonna say is I wrote a whole,
I did a whole video on migrating yourcode base from Objective C to Swift.
And yeah, like I did that video twoyears ago and now with the Async Await
stuff and concurrency, I just, ugh, Igotta do a sequel to it because I don't
even know how you'd get around that.

(22:50):
Like with GCD and a syn away,like that's gotta be a nightmare.
So I haven't gotten into that yet, soI can't speak to it, but what, okay.
What do you like aboutObjective C over Swift?
Let's start with that

Like you said, it's a lot less strict, which
could be a good thing or a bad thing.
But.
It's a lot more free flowingand like easygoing in a sense.
It's not throwing errors at me as often.
So that's cool.
But then again, there's a reason thatSwift is so strict, it's trying to

(23:25):
keep you from breaking things, right?
It's a give and a take,but I do enjoy that.
It just lets me do whatever outif it's broken when I run the app.

Do you, is there anything about UI Kit
that you're like, oh my gosh,this is so well I should ask.
Okay, it's UI kit.
What are they using for the ui?
Is it all coded or storyboards or what?

So the UI kit stuff, I'm still a very
confused on UI kit is likeobjective C isn't the nightmare.
It's UI kit.
That's the nightmare for me right now.
Assuming it's storyboard, likethey have storyboards, they

Okay.

Yeah, so I think it's a little bit of
both because there's nine reposin the project and they all do
have something different going on.
I've noticed like the storyboard filesand some of the repos and coded UI and
others, but I'm just trying to make myway through it and figure it all out.
Right now

Are you, what version of Xcode are you using for this?
Is it still

I'm using 15,

good.
It's not I was just scared that itwas like one of these apps where it's
oh, it works, but you have to runin an X code 10 because it's so old.
Okay, good.
That's a good thing.

It, when I opened it up, it like gave me the
option to migrate everything I needto be migrated so that I could use
it in the newer version of Xcode.
So I just hit yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anything else you wanna talkabout before we close out?
Anything you've learned along theway that you wish you knew, or
any resource you wish that was outthere to help someone like you?

I want to encourage as many people as
possible to learn in public.
I.
That has been the singlebest decision that I've made
in, on this journey so far.
Like I wouldn't be here on this podcast.
I wouldn't have this internship.
I wouldn't know most of thepeople that I know who have
been helping me out so much.
I've had people from the communitylike hop on calls with me at 11:30 PM

(25:16):
at night helping me debug code thatI'm stressed out about, I would not
be where I am today, if not for thecommunity that I've built by just
learning and building in public.
So if I could give anybody any pieceof advice, it'd be to make sure
that you're putting yourself outthere, you're learning in public,
and you're creating community.

Yeah, I agree completely.
Speaking of learning in public, ifyou wanna watch me miserably fail at
something every Tuesday morning, EST9:00 AM I live stream, my pathetic
attempts at whatever I'm working on.
Gotta plug that while I'm here.
Do you, have you tried doing anylive streaming or anything like that?

Danielle Lewis (guest): I'm a very nervous I. (25:56):
undefined
Not the most social person.
So I'm still in the process ofgetting more comfortable with,
even like I made a YouTube channel,that was a big step for me.
Blogging another big stepfor me, so I'm trying to ease
my way into to more things.
So maybe, soon I canmuster up the courage to

If you do, I'll plug it.
So let me know.
That sounds, that sounds awesome.
Yeah.
Danielle, thank you so muchfor making the time to come on.
This was fantastic to hear your story.
Where could people find you?

Yeah.
So I'm on Twitter at d lewis Dev.
My website is Danielle lewis.dev.
You can find me.
All of my projects there, my portfolio.
Yeah, those two places.
YouTube at d Lewis Dev as well.

Awesome.
Thank you again.
It's been fantastic and hopefullywe'll have you on again sometime soon.
People can find me on.
Yeah, you're welcome.
People can find me onTwitter at Leo g Dion.
My company is break Digit.
If you're watching this onYouTube, please and subscribe.
And if you're listening to this on apodcast player please gimme a review.
Let me know if there'ssomething you want me to.

(27:05):
Have on a certain topic, certainguest, maybe you have a talk you're
gonna put, be putting togetherand you wanna fail on my podcast
rather than at a conference.
Come on the show.
Thank you again and I look forward totalking to you at the next episode.
Bye everybody.
I,

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