Cedric Beust, PhD’s Post

These past couple of weeks, I've been working on porting my Apple ][ emulator[1] from `egui` to `iced`. For those of you not familiar with the Rust GUI landscape, it's... a mess. These two libraries are the top contenders, but they still have a long way to go. The main difference is that egui is immediate mode while iced is retained mode (ask me if you want more details on what that means). What was interesting to me is that while I think both are very decent libraries, and while egui is clearly more popular, it has always violated the principle of least surprise for me and laying things out with it has been a constant struggle. The simple act of lining widgets up is so hard with egui, which is probably due to a mix of personal feelings and biases and the fact that immediate mode GUI's are by definition harder to lay out. iced is so much more intuitive to me. I write some code to put widgets together, and 90% of the time, it's exactly where I wanted it. And the other 10% takes 2mn to correct. Anyway. Probably still in the honeymoon phase, but another aspect of iced I've enjoyed is that it's following the Elm model. It's been a lot of work porting all my graphic code to iced, but I'm enjoying the journey so far. Once I get to a point that I'm happy with, I'll post some comparative screenshots between the two GUI's. [1]

Hurry up!! Limited Time Offer!! 50% OFF on Lifetime Premium 🤩🚀 “Swifty Compiler” app is a great way to get an algorithm or method down on the go and make sure it works. You can use it as a playground to test Swift code quickly or review concepts. Link 👇 https://lnkd.in/d8TrMsZ #Swift #SwiftyCompiler #iOSDev #iPhone #apple #appstore #SwiftUI #SwiftLang #100DaysOfCode #iOSDevHappyHour #DEVCommunity #coding #developers #Playground #SwiftPlaygrounds #Xcode #UIKit

🎉 Flash Sale! 50% OFF on Lifetime Premium 🔥🚀 “Swifty Compiler” app is a great way to get an algorithm or method down on the go and make sure it works. You can use it as a playground to test Swift code quickly or review concepts. Link 👇 https://lnkd.in/d8TrMsZ #Swift #SwiftyCompiler #iOSDev #iPhone #apple #appstore #SwiftUI #SwiftLang #100DaysOfCode #iOSDevHappyHour #DEVCommunity #coding #developers #Playground #SwiftPlaygrounds #Xcode #UIKit #IDE

The Apple IIgs: On a Machine This Slow, You Had To Get Weird: Long-time Slashdot reader garote writes: It's the year 1991. You're a teenage computer geek. You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game. You meet at the benches during lunch hour, and pass around crude plans scribbled on graph paper. You assign each other impressive titles like "Master Programmer", "Sound Designer", and "Area Data Input". You swap 3.5" disks like furtive secret agents, and stay up coding untl 3am. Your parents look at your owlish eyes — and your slipping grades — and ask if you're "on drugs". If that sounds familiar, this essay may prove interesting. It uses the game my friends and I started — but didn't finish — in High School over 30 years ago, to explore the absurd programming contortions we did to make it playable on the Apple IIgs: The red-headed stepchild of the Apple II line; a machine that languished for six years without a hardware upgrade to avoid competing with the Macintosh. Thanks to the recent release of the first cycle-accurate emulator for this machine, you can actually play the game in all its screen-tearing glory. You can also explore the source code which has survived for 30 years, and been adapted to build on modern hardware thanks to Merlin32 and CiderPress II. "Nowadays, the content of the game itself is only good for an embarrassing laugh," according to the web page, "but I feel that the code we hammered out shows the unique challenges of a bygone era, which should be remembered..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Apple IIgs: On a Machine This Slow, You Had To Get Weird: Long-time Slashdot reader garote writes: It's the year 1991. You're a teenage computer geek. You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game. You meet at the benches during lunch hour, and pass around crude plans scribbled on graph paper. You assign each other impressive titles like "Master Programmer", "Sound Designer", and "Area Data Input". You swap 3.5" disks like furtive secret agents, and stay up coding untl 3am. Your parents look at your owlish eyes — and your slipping grades — and ask if you're "on drugs". If that sounds familiar, this essay may prove interesting. It uses the game my friends and I started — but didn't finish — in High School over 30 years ago, to explore the absurd programming contortions we did to make it playable on the Apple IIgs: The red-headed stepchild of the Apple II line; a machine that languished for six years without a hardware upgrade to avoid competing with the Macintosh. Thanks to the recent release of the first cycle-accurate emulator for this machine, you can actually play the game in all its screen-tearing glory. You can also explore the source code which has survived for 30 years, and been adapted to build on modern hardware thanks to Merlin32 and CiderPress II. "Nowadays, the content of the game itself is only good for an embarrassing laugh," according to the web page, "but I feel that the code we hammered out shows the unique challenges of a bygone era, which should be remembered..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

V9.4.4 is out 🔥 “Swifty Compiler” app is a great way to get an algorithm or method down on the go and make sure it works. You can use it as a playground to test Swift code quickly or review concepts. https://lnkd.in/d8TrMsZ #Swift #SwiftyCompiler #iOSDev #iPhone #apple #appstore #SwiftUI #SwiftLang #100DaysOfCode #iOSDevHappyHour #DEVCommunity #coding #developers #Playground #SwiftPlaygrounds #Xcode #UIKit #IDE

A piece of news that went under the radar at WWDC24 is Swift Embedded, certainly less flashy compared to VisionPro and AI (not for me, considering I started as an embedded engineer, and first love is never forgotten). Until now, it was possible to use Swift to develop applications for: - Apple devices - Web with Vapor - Android using skip.tools As of today, it is also possible to use Swift to create applications on embedded hardware (like Raspberry Pi Pico, Arduino, and so on). Currently, the Swift Embedded version is in a preview status (you can find more information https://lnkd.in/dJSkw6dY), but it has the potential to become a real alternative to C++ (there are many contenders for the throne, but the king doesn't seem to want to abdicate just yet). Sure, at the moment, languages like Rust have an advantage in this area (not to forget MicroPython), but it’s a game worth playing. #swift Originally posted https://lnkd.in/dqR5-DRv

For those interested in retro designs, I find it interesting that Stefany Allaire has stopped offering the 32-bit 68040V-based system she used to sell and has gone all in on 6502/65816 as well as a new "FNX6809" cycle-accurate implementation of the MC6809 CPU that wasn't used in many home computer designs apart from the Tandy Color Computer (CoCo) line. Her version is also pin-compatible with the 65C02 and 65C816. I remember at one point she was working on a CPU-agnostic design where you could plug in a Z80 CPU, possibly an 8088, or a 6502, but I assume the community on Discord wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about Zilog and Intel compared to the 65xx/68xx. Also, you'd have a confusing time with firmware with so many incompatible instruction sets. I went on a deep dive last night looking at Z80 and CP/M and the original was never competitive with 6502 on a per-MHz basis, even with the more powerful instruction set. For $99, there's a "Zeal" 8-bit design from China, but it's only running at 10 MHz. What I'd really like to see, although I don't know if it could be done profitably, would be a handheld PC / retro game console using the eZ80 that's in the TI-84 Plus CE graphing calculators (which TI has unconscionably never dropped the price of, because they have a lock on "calculators allowed for standardized testing in American schools"). Unlike the original, the eZ80 is pipelined and takes 1/3 the number of clock cycles per instruction, in addition to running at 15 MHz (in the calculators). There's even a hobbyist OS with a GUI called SymbOS that runs on vintage Amstrad CPC machines, and could be ported to run on just about anything with a Z80. I'll likely add a Microsoft Z80 card emulation to my Apple IIe emulator just to see CP/M 2.2 running on a typical system of the era. There are enough preserved disk images in the Apple IIe disk format (there was no industry standard for 5-1/4" CP/M disks in those days) to make it a little easier to play with than the Commodore 128, and it seems like CP/M 3.0 was never as popular as the older 2.2 version (larger size, not many needing >64K RAM support?).

Warp is a modern terminal emulator designed to enhance productivity and efficiency for developers. It is built using the Rust programming language, which contributes to its speed and reliability. Initially available for MacOS, Warp has now been extended to support Linux, making it accessible to a wider range of users within the developer community. https://www.warp.dev Key features of Warp include: - **AI Integration**: Warp incorporates AI to offer features like auto-completion and command suggestions, aiming to streamline the development workflow[1]. - **Collaborative Tools**: It supports collaborative features, allowing users to share commands and workflows, enhancing team productivity - **Block-based Command Grouping**: Commands and their outputs are grouped into blocks, making it easier to navigate and manage terminal output - **IDE-like Text Input and Navigation**: Warp functions similarly to an IDE or text editor, offering advanced text manipulation capabilities, such as filtering, selections, and multiple cursors - **Customization Options**: Users can customize keybindings, launch configurations, and themes, including creating custom themes to personalize their experience - **Warp Drive**: A feature that lets users save and share important commands for easy retrieval and execution Warp's integration of AI and its focus on collaboration and productivity tools set it apart from traditional terminal emulators. It is designed for developers who spend significant time working in the terminal, offering features that are particularly beneficial for heavy users The Linux version of Warp shares 98% of its underlying code with the Mac version, ensuring feature parity across platforms. It is not an Electron app; instead, it utilizes open-source Rust libraries and a Rust-based UI framework, which the company plans to open source

Symbolicating SwiftUI (and any Apple Framework) Have you ever noticed that crash logs sometimes don't make much sense or are missing some symbols? Unlike traditional UIKit applications, Apple does not provide debug symbols (dSYMs) for SwiftUI. This means that any crash containing SwiftUI addresses in the stack trace will not be symbolicated. The article author has discovered a way to symbolicate any Apple framework and want to share it with everyone. https://lnkd.in/dB4fFW8w #ios #iosdevelopment #swift #swiftui #programming