Compile Swift going forward, it's all great stuff
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What's up everybody, welcome to another episode of The Podcast with these people. Now I know, that's not the usual introduction. All will be explained, or at least we'll try to convince you. The other person is still Jeff. How are you doing, Jeff? I am still here, surprisingly.

Alright, and I'm still here, not surprisingly, and probably much to everybody's disappointment. So this is a slightly unusual episode. First of all, let me make it clear, because I know that there's been some recently. This is not one of those announcements like a lot of other podcasts. Well, this is the last episode, and no, that is not what this is. However... The last episode was the last episode. The last episode was the previous episode. This is the next episode that is now.

Or back then, depending on when you listen to it. What I meant was last episode was the last episode of the Compile Swift podcast. That could be true, but it's not the last episode of a podcast. And we're going to explain everything, folks. If you thought the end of Lost was confusing, there ain't nothing. We got this.

Okay, so we're going to be slightly different in this episode. We're going to explain some changes. Or the other way of putting it is, what the hell did Peter do this week? That's the other way to explain it. So it's kind of one of those, oh, right, everything was renewing as far as services and everything else for the podcasting this week. Well, actually, the podcasting

What's today? Yeah, the day of recording this, today is the day that they just billed me. So it is also afforded time to sort of reflect upon where we're at, where we think we want to go, or maybe more accurately, me. I guess we should say I'm kind of the cause for all of this. Now, don't worry, folks. There's still going to be a Swift podcast out there.

Let us make that very clear, right? We're not suddenly going to become like one of those true crime podcasts or something like that. But we are pivoting

in a good way, I think is how I would describe it. So I'll start by diving into this, right? When this podcast was first invented and the idea came along, and as I say on the website, it was to serve a purpose that I needed and hopefully to serve a purpose that other people needed as well. At the time, Swift was obviously brand new and wanted to put something out there. Now,

Over time, there has, of course, been changes, right? You know, Swift is, there is, you know, a lot more to making apps than there used to be, right? So when I started this, to me, the idea was pretty clean cut. Oh, yeah, Apple's new language is Swift. I want to learn Swift. Hey, I'd love to learn how to make podcasts better. So I'll make a podcast about Swift, right?

And that's how it stayed for a long time. And then a co-host came along and now I've caught you up to today. I know, pretty short history, right? But it's not what it used to be. And there's a lot of other tools, a lot of other things. And we'll talk a little bit about what I've noticed in the metrics as far as what people...

seem to be interested in. But Jeff, you want to jump in there as far as how we've seen the ecosystem change and why we think there's scope for more? Yeah, and I mean, this is obviously something that exists well beyond podcasts, but

it has been the case over my entire career, certainly that mobile was this humongous thing. It was, it was the thing. And, you know, we had a lot of ourselves put into that, a lot of knowledge put into that. And there were a lot of people wanting to learn and wanting to know a lot about mobile. And especially over the last two or three years, um,

It definitely seems like mobile has kind of hit a point of maturity where it's no longer the hot new kid on the block. And so...

What we're looking at and what we're seeing is a podcast that is very much focused just on Apple, just on iOS, just on one particular language is not really something that people are finding compelling these days. And it's not just podcasts. We've seen this with conferences. We've seen this with in-person meetups. We've seen this with all kinds of things. And so in order to keep providing content

quality content we need to kind of expand our scope beyond just a very small specific niche yeah and i think an important point there that you hit on is now that swift is mature right i think okay i'm not going to say swift ui for example is mature but it is certainly stable for one of a better way of putting it um is along with that comes the problem of

There is not something to talk about every week, right? There's not something new. There's not something radical shift. There's not controversy. There's always controversy. You know, so there are times that we struggle and we have, ironically, we do have a list of topics, but

As Jeff and I have been looking at the topics recently, it's kind of been one of those, yeah, we don't really want to talk about that. It's not that interesting. And a key part driver for me, from my perspective, is it has to be something I'm interested in.

for me to be able to really sort of passionately dive into it for one of a better way of putting it because I think that that makes that comes across in the recordings right if you don't sound interested people pick up on these things and I didn't want that to be a thing and at the same time I didn't

want to stop making the podcast because I don't want to speak for Jeff here, but Swift is still my main language and it is the language that I use to make apps, right? And everything else. And it is very much the thing that I live and breathe a lot of the time, still professionally make apps, but there is not enough language.

interesting happening every week to keep telling folks about it right and that was part of the reason that we switched to a two-week release schedule because it gave us time not only time to do our projects which you've heard us talk about in other episodes but also time for us to gather up do our research and you know the community is a big part of this as far as what they're interested in

And we also have other interests. You know, I think it's a fine line, Jeff, right, between defining something as another interest and this is another tool in the box that I use to get the job done, right? Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. Yeah. And so we thought, you know, and folks who've followed some of my other podcasts that sort of I'm doing this series about making an app right now. And that was also part of what got me thinking about this was, yeah, I want to talk about some of these other tools that I use to make apps, some of these other approaches, the whole app.

ecosphere, I guess is how I would describe it. Right. And it became very apparent in the metrics when I looked at them, the folks out there listening to this podcast also have interest in these because see that, you know, the numbers bless you audience. Thank you so much. The numbers are going up all the time. It's fantastic. And that actually applies a lot of pressure as well to keep delivering and keep delivering good content.

content and it also tells us that you know we could sit and recite code until the end of the day but I don't know about you Jeff but I couldn't listen to someone just talking about you know like oh and and then you go in here and it's this and dot that and that's not where I'm at when I'm listening to these podcasts right it's more about listening and being you know almost feeling like you're listening to someone have a conversation with you about app development as opposed to

you know, this is the code I wrote. You know what I mean? Yeah. Podcasting is not the medium for which to explain, uh,

in-depth technical perspectives. You know, it's very hard to read code out loud in a way that makes sense. And so, yeah, we've definitely already kind of been pivoting away from that and more towards the, you know, general best practices, general tooling, general like personal and career growth and that kind of stuff going forward and trying to look into more of these general things and less often

focused on the specific implementation of it in one particular language for one particular platform. Yeah, absolutely. Because we're also very aware as, as probably a lot of long-term developers are out there, it is part of the process. And we know certainly from friends of ours, right. That we we've had conversations with just up to the other day, you know,

Making apps and releasing apps, it's not hard to make an app. It is very hard to make a successful app. It can be very hard to get it successfully through app review and add into the store and to get people using it. And we have certainly seen from the feedback that we've got, people are very interested in these things because...

Again, this is all part of the journey, right? And this is what we're sort of getting at here is as we go through these other parts of the journey that we've not really spoken too much about before, we are very conscious that other folks are going through them too and clearly want to have more information out there and conversations about it. Fantastic. That's why we've got the Discord. That's why we do this. This is why we do our live streams and the recognition that it's not just us.

the Swift language, right? There's all these other things like Jeff, for example, I don't know how many streams you've done at this point where you've been using tourist, for example, but it's an integral part of your process for making apps with Swift, right? Yeah. I mean, and it's not just even,

specifically things that are for building iOS apps. I'd love to spend more time talking about my IDE of choice. I'd love to spend more time talking about AI tools, the abilities that you can use with them. And that can be true whether you're building a mobile app. That can be true if you're building a desktop app. That can be true if you're building a server-side backend or a website. And so it really...

I think it limits us to say we're only going to talk about one particular language. And there are so many things that we can discuss that are helpful. Yes, certainly to people who are developers in Swift doing mobile development day to day and things that are still helpful, even if you have a day job where you're doing something completely different.

Right, right. I mean, you know, how many times have we had folks say to us, hey, I need to do a back end, like you say, for my app, I got to call some APIs, I got to do some kind of server storage, some kind of server setup. What server side language should I use? Should I use, you know, like we covered Vapor and Hummingbird and all those kind of things. And so we want to open it up.

to have those conversations and to say, you know what? It is perfectly fine to keep asking those questions. And we certainly have plenty of thoughts and discoveries ourselves. I'm currently working through discovering AI, for example. So, you know, but we want to talk about that because...

Everybody's talking about that and therefore there's conversations to be had. I want to learn from folks and so we want to share that information with them and cover those topics.

So we will still absolutely Swift and Apple platform development is very much our core thing. It's not going to go away, but we are going to be covering these other topics as well. So if there is, for example, an episode that you're like, I'm not really interested in that, skip it.

Catch the next one, I think is what we're saying, right? It gives us an opportunity to, I guess, demonstrate what we know, but also demonstrate that there are so many other parts to the equation of making apps. So as you might have noticed on your feed or in your favorite podcast player, we are currently named the Untitled App Developer Podcast.

And we left that very much as a placeholder to kind of announce this and say, yes, we're expanding our scope. We are no longer going to be the Compile Swift podcast because we are no longer focused solely and specifically on the Swift language.

But we're obviously not going to be the Untitled App Developer Podcast forever. And that's where you come in. We would like you as a community to suggest, like, what kinds of things do you think of when you think of app development as a whole? What are the things that you think of when you think of our podcast? And reach out to us either on our Discord, on our live streams, on our social media, on Apple's podcast platform.

with any ideas that you have for an app development podcast name, what we should be calling ourselves going forward. We'll probably not put this up exactly to a vote, but we would love to take whatever ideas you have into consideration. Yeah, absolutely. Because for better or worse, you know, when it started out and for the longest time, it was just me. And therefore, yeah,

You know, at this point, so many folks come to me and know me and they're like, oh, you're CompileSwift. Yes, that is part of the problem when you're doing something like this is the branding worked so well, but it worked so well to brand it as me, which...

was never really a goal. It just worked out that way. But at this point, and as with our Discord, right, I didn't want it to be a me thing. Part of the reason for the name CompileSwift was, well, okay, firstly, it's catchy, right? But secondly, it's right in there, compilation, right? I wanted it to become a community thing

which it very much has, thanks to the listeners and, you know, like the Dev Club Discord and things like that. And therefore, I want to move this...

into a more of a you know yes we host it we do it but it is a conversation with folks it is a two-way thing um and and to get away from oh the compile swift guy right i mean don't get me wrong it's not hurt me at all far from it but i don't want it to be

The thing that is Peter. Do you know what I mean? And so that's kind of what we're looking for here. And also recognition. Because it's not right. That for example. Poor Jeff. He comes along.

He's the co-host. He's great at it. But it's like, but it's CompileSwift and it's that other guy. And therefore, we want to sort of fix this glitch, right? That's it, folks. So reach back to us, right? There's going to be links in the show notes as usual. Best place to get us is always going to be on the Discord where all the other fantastic folks are, including a lot of the listeners. But however you want to do it, please reach back to us. We are here for you. That is part of the goal and the driver for this.

And with that, that is what we've got in this episode. Jeff, let's do it one more time for the last time on the What Was Compiled Swift podcast, now going to be something else podcast. Where will they continue to find you?

uh, cook a type.com on all of the socials and everything. There you go. Uh, you can find me, uh, I'm still, I'm still on cabalsweeps.com. That's the irony. Um, we also need to find a new domain name. So, uh, maybe we'll see. Um, and you can reach me at peterwhitton.com, but again, go to the dev club discord. That's the best place to get us and everybody else with a conversation. Take care, folks. We will speak to you again very soon. We promise.