8 ms·

iOS Code Samples

213 points by thatusertwo 12y ago

wodenokoto 12y ago
That's really cool and must have been a lot of work collecting and testing code. Can you talk a little bit about the intended business model, which apparently did pan out?
volaski 12y ago
How are these "failed"? Just looks like a nice set of demo purpose apps to me
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  I'd like to second this question. I've thought about producing demo/stub apps on a similar basis but my lack of marketing expertise/foresight/interest has been a real blocker. I'm curious to hear how you got into this project, when it started to become a business interest, when you decided it was 'failed' (I note these target iOS 7, but hope all is not lost with iOS 8)
- melling 12y ago
  Well if I had to guess, it's because he didn't turn it into a profitable business. Targeting developers is probably not a good market because most are notoriously cheap. I've seen rants where people complain about $70 being too much for Sublime Text, for example. Howard Pinsky did a good job explaining his similar problem in this video: http://youtu.be/IBUh8bxbdmU http://youtu.be/IBUh8bxbdmU
  - HeshamA 12y ago
    I haven't come across his channel before but from what I saw he has good quality tutorials plus he has 300k subscribers. It is really sad that the combination of quality and 300k subscribers doesn't bring him a decent return.
    - timepiece 12y ago
      In the age of Ad Block, I say a return of $50 every 6 months or per video tutorial is good if not remarkable.
      - jnbiche 12y ago
        OK, so perhaps it's not an unexpected return. But that kind of return does not provide the creator with enough income to make a living, even in a country with a lower cost of living. After all, a quality tutorial is not something even a highly-skilled individual can throw together in a few minutes.
        timepiece 12y ago
        Yeah sure $50 is ridiculous but as something on the side and in light of the turbulent market dynamics post ad blockers proliferation, it's really remarkable.
  - rplnt 12y ago
    I know it's hard to imagine but many (most) developers are not from USA (and similar). They work on/for local markets, earning local salaries. $70 is suddenly a lot. Nothing to do with being "cheap".
    - melling 12y ago
      That statement is made a lot. It's easy to believe because of how the world population is distributed. However, it's just a made-up statement. Where do most developers live? Do you have any real data to backup that statement?
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - sebastianconcpt 12y ago
        Take the USD appreciation in front of most currencies and you'll have a made up yet pretty reasonable estimation. 70 sounds fine but what about 210 for a text editor? That's how it feels in Brazil for example.
        melling 12y ago
        Yes, I get how the exchange rate works, and I understand that there are a fair number of developers in Brazil. It doesn't answer my question though, which is where do most developers live? Like I said there's nothing wrong with choosing free software. It's a great option. The more Linux, vim/Emacs/Eclipse, Gimp/Inkscape users, the better.
        sebastianconcpt 12y ago
        Is the statement in question this one? They work on/for local markets, earning local salaries. $70 is suddenly a lot. Nothing to do with being "cheap".
      - rplnt 12y ago
        I do not have any real data to back up that statement. But I'm pretty sure about it. edit: To explain a bit, just take web developers. No one would outsource creating a web page to US (or wherever it would cost 10 times the money). Various Information Systems as well. Even bigger US companies have usually development centers in some "poorer" countries.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    Pretty much everything is too much if the alternative is free. Taking your Sublime Text example, you can get Atom.io which has functionality that is comparable to ST - meaning you'd only pay the $70 for performance. And even then, you can get the free / demo version of ST which is just as usable as the full version, but with an occasional and IMO not very annoying popup every once in a while.
    - melling 12y ago
      It's fine to use the open source option. The more people who use it and help contribute to it the better. However, saying that you can live with the occasional nagging of the paid option violates the license. It's an honor system. https://www.sublimetext.com/buy https://www.sublimetext.com/buy Later, we should rip on all those unethical MBA's. Those "losers" need to be taught ethics. Ridiculous!
  - collyw 12y ago
    I think a lot of the problem is that you don't know how much you want to commit to a product. I have tried a number of JS frameworks, and wouldn't pay for any of the, I would pay for Django (or get my company to) as it has saved me loads of effort over the last 4 years. Though it did take probably 6 months before i was aware quite how much effort it was saving me.
    - ern 12y ago
      I would pay for Django (or get my company to) as it has saved me loads of effort over the last 4 years Not being snarky, but https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/donate/ https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/donate/ is an option.
      - hullo 12y ago
        That is true, but it is much much easier to get most companies to pay for a product than to make a donation.
  - wz1000 12y ago
    Many widely used developer tools have been free(as in freedom) for decades. This is natural, as developers are actually competent enough to take advantage of that fact by virtue of knowing how to code. So many tools become popular because of their extensibility and hackability.
dev-ious 12y ago
awesome @!
drtse4 12y ago
What was your product? With this collection of working samples you could build a reference menu bar app with an interface similar to codebox, dash-snippets,etc... iOS beginners will at least consider buying something like this, imho.
orta 12y ago
This is nice, however my advice is if you're looking for something like this you're better off going directly to http://cocoapods.org http://cocoapods.org then running `pod try XXX` in the terminal to load the sample code directly in Xcode. This will work for ~9000 libraries.
- crucialfelix 12y ago
  That's great. I did not know about that one. The CLI help is typically rubyesque, by which I mean frighteningly laconic and uninformative: + try Try a Pod! CocoaPods.org doesn't seem to document it either: http://guides.cocoapods.org/terminal/commands.html#commands http://guides.cocoapods.org/terminal/commands.html#commands So what it does is clones a test xcworkspace into a temp folder: /usr/local/bin/git clone https://github.com/facebook/ios-snapshot-test-case.git https://github.com/facebook/ios-snapshot-test-case.git /private/tmp/CocoaPods/Try/ORStackView/Pods/FBSnapshotTestCase --single-branch --depth 1 --branch 1.2 Cloning into '/private/tmp/CocoaPods/Try/ORStackView/Pods/FBSnapshotTestCase'... Opening '/private/tmp/CocoaPods/Try/ORStackView/ORStackView.xcworkspace'
  - orta 12y ago
    Cool feedback, I've raised two issues from it. https://github.com/CocoaPods/cocoapods-try/issues/29 https://github.com/CocoaPods/cocoapods-try/issues/29 https://github.com/CocoaPods/guides.cocoapods.org/issues/64 https://github.com/CocoaPods/guides.cocoapods.org/issues/64
dilipray 12y ago
What is this? Where is your failed product? I found only libraries. Which I find in awesome-ios.
txu 12y ago
Opened a sample and it works really well. Why not upload to Github so people can contribute?
- Fogh 12y ago
  All of the samples seems to be from open source projects that already are on GitHub.
  - matttthompson 12y ago
    And to be clear—these are all existing sample apps for open source Objective-C projects. The creator of this site does not appear to have done anything but gathered these up into zip files. The complete lack of attribution is misleading.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    Anything preventing author or anyone else from putting in Github?
- joshwa 12y ago
  Downloading a giant zipfile with everything feels very 1998 (FILE_ID.DIZ anyone?)... Would be really helpful to have these split up into multiple files (multiple github repos would be even better).
matttthompson 12y ago
I don't understand why this is getting so much attention. This is nothing more than a couple zip files containing a few Objective-C open source projects that happen to have example projects. As far as I can tell, the only original contributions here are that the author tested the apps (in an old version of Xcode) and wrote vague descriptions of what those projects did. As @orta mentions in another comment, http://cocoapods.org http://cocoapods.org already has a canonical database of thousands of projects. And there are plenty of other sites that do a much better job of curating (and properly attributing) interesting projects. Edit: Link to original HN submission (2012), for anyone curious - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182483
- pygy_ 12y ago
  The title was changed. The original n=one gave more context: It used to be a commercial project by @thatusertwo, and he just made it free.
- jlgosse 12y ago
  Hilarious because the first item in the list is actually a copy of your project.
aaronbrethorst 12y ago
Also https://www.cocoacontrols.com https://www.cocoacontrols.com (n.b. I make Cocoa Controls)
- joshavant 12y ago
  Longtime user of your site! Thanks!
- rememberlenny 12y ago
  Great site! Email newsletter sign up at top of page is broken.
  - aaronbrethorst 12y ago
    Much obliged. I'll get it fixed.
urda 12y ago
That website is just god awful. No, I don't want to download a freaking zip file and dig through it. I expected snippets and readable code on the site.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Maybe Github or Docco?
ConAntonakos 12y ago
My entire ocular system cried while trying to digest what the website was trying to convey to me.
chtoric 12y ago
the link appear down to me, here is the webcache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ioscodesamples.com/index.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ioscode...
- rememberlenny 12y ago
  I reuploaded it and placed it on github. Here is the HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485
fit2rule 12y ago
Well its gone, darn. Anyone get a mirror before it went poof?
- rememberlenny 12y ago
  I put it on github and added a readme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485
bilalel 12y ago
Here is the current status of the page: "I hadn't expect this to become so popular." With title: "The End" Hope page will comeback online soon.
- rememberlenny 12y ago
  The original page was just a link. I reuploaded the contents to github and linked it on this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485

213 points by thatusertwo 12y ago

That's really cool and must have been a lot of work collecting and testing code. Can you talk a little bit about the intended business model, which apparently did pan out?

volaski 12y ago

How are these "failed"? Just looks like a nice set of demo purpose apps to me

spacemanmatt 12y ago
I'd like to second this question. I've thought about producing demo/stub apps on a similar basis but my lack of marketing expertise/foresight/interest has been a real blocker. I'm curious to hear how you got into this project, when it started to become a business interest, when you decided it was 'failed' (I note these target iOS 7, but hope all is not lost with iOS 8)
melling 12y ago
Well if I had to guess, it's because he didn't turn it into a profitable business. Targeting developers is probably not a good market because most are notoriously cheap. I've seen rants where people complain about $70 being too much for Sublime Text, for example. Howard Pinsky did a good job explaining his similar problem in this video: http://youtu.be/IBUh8bxbdmU http://youtu.be/IBUh8bxbdmU
- HeshamA 12y ago
  I haven't come across his channel before but from what I saw he has good quality tutorials plus he has 300k subscribers. It is really sad that the combination of quality and 300k subscribers doesn't bring him a decent return.
  - timepiece 12y ago
    In the age of Ad Block, I say a return of $50 every 6 months or per video tutorial is good if not remarkable.
    - jnbiche 12y ago
      OK, so perhaps it's not an unexpected return. But that kind of return does not provide the creator with enough income to make a living, even in a country with a lower cost of living. After all, a quality tutorial is not something even a highly-skilled individual can throw together in a few minutes.
      - timepiece 12y ago
        Yeah sure $50 is ridiculous but as something on the side and in light of the turbulent market dynamics post ad blockers proliferation, it's really remarkable.
- rplnt 12y ago
  I know it's hard to imagine but many (most) developers are not from USA (and similar). They work on/for local markets, earning local salaries. $70 is suddenly a lot. Nothing to do with being "cheap".
  - melling 12y ago
    That statement is made a lot. It's easy to believe because of how the world population is distributed. However, it's just a made-up statement. Where do most developers live? Do you have any real data to backup that statement?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - sebastianconcpt 12y ago
      Take the USD appreciation in front of most currencies and you'll have a made up yet pretty reasonable estimation. 70 sounds fine but what about 210 for a text editor? That's how it feels in Brazil for example.
      - melling 12y ago
        Yes, I get how the exchange rate works, and I understand that there are a fair number of developers in Brazil. It doesn't answer my question though, which is where do most developers live? Like I said there's nothing wrong with choosing free software. It's a great option. The more Linux, vim/Emacs/Eclipse, Gimp/Inkscape users, the better.
        sebastianconcpt 12y ago
        Is the statement in question this one? They work on/for local markets, earning local salaries. $70 is suddenly a lot. Nothing to do with being "cheap".
    - rplnt 12y ago
      I do not have any real data to back up that statement. But I'm pretty sure about it. edit: To explain a bit, just take web developers. No one would outsource creating a web page to US (or wherever it would cost 10 times the money). Various Information Systems as well. Even bigger US companies have usually development centers in some "poorer" countries.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Pretty much everything is too much if the alternative is free. Taking your Sublime Text example, you can get Atom.io which has functionality that is comparable to ST - meaning you'd only pay the $70 for performance. And even then, you can get the free / demo version of ST which is just as usable as the full version, but with an occasional and IMO not very annoying popup every once in a while.
  - melling 12y ago
    It's fine to use the open source option. The more people who use it and help contribute to it the better. However, saying that you can live with the occasional nagging of the paid option violates the license. It's an honor system. https://www.sublimetext.com/buy https://www.sublimetext.com/buy Later, we should rip on all those unethical MBA's. Those "losers" need to be taught ethics. Ridiculous!
- collyw 12y ago
  I think a lot of the problem is that you don't know how much you want to commit to a product. I have tried a number of JS frameworks, and wouldn't pay for any of the, I would pay for Django (or get my company to) as it has saved me loads of effort over the last 4 years. Though it did take probably 6 months before i was aware quite how much effort it was saving me.
  - ern 12y ago
    I would pay for Django (or get my company to) as it has saved me loads of effort over the last 4 years Not being snarky, but https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/donate/ https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/donate/ is an option.
    - hullo 12y ago
      That is true, but it is much much easier to get most companies to pay for a product than to make a donation.
- wz1000 12y ago
  Many widely used developer tools have been free(as in freedom) for decades. This is natural, as developers are actually competent enough to take advantage of that fact by virtue of knowing how to code. So many tools become popular because of their extensibility and hackability.

dev-ious 12y ago

awesome @!

drtse4 12y ago

What was your product? With this collection of working samples you could build a reference menu bar app with an interface similar to codebox, dash-snippets,etc... iOS beginners will at least consider buying something like this, imho.

orta 12y ago

This is nice, however my advice is if you're looking for something like this you're better off going directly to http://cocoapods.org http://cocoapods.org then running `pod try XXX` in the terminal to load the sample code directly in Xcode. This will work for ~9000 libraries.

crucialfelix 12y ago
That's great. I did not know about that one. The CLI help is typically rubyesque, by which I mean frighteningly laconic and uninformative: + try Try a Pod! CocoaPods.org doesn't seem to document it either: http://guides.cocoapods.org/terminal/commands.html#commands http://guides.cocoapods.org/terminal/commands.html#commands So what it does is clones a test xcworkspace into a temp folder: /usr/local/bin/git clone https://github.com/facebook/ios-snapshot-test-case.git https://github.com/facebook/ios-snapshot-test-case.git /private/tmp/CocoaPods/Try/ORStackView/Pods/FBSnapshotTestCase --single-branch --depth 1 --branch 1.2 Cloning into '/private/tmp/CocoaPods/Try/ORStackView/Pods/FBSnapshotTestCase'... Opening '/private/tmp/CocoaPods/Try/ORStackView/ORStackView.xcworkspace'
- orta 12y ago
  Cool feedback, I've raised two issues from it. https://github.com/CocoaPods/cocoapods-try/issues/29 https://github.com/CocoaPods/cocoapods-try/issues/29 https://github.com/CocoaPods/guides.cocoapods.org/issues/64 https://github.com/CocoaPods/guides.cocoapods.org/issues/64

dilipray 12y ago

What is this? Where is your failed product? I found only libraries. Which I find in awesome-ios.

txu 12y ago

Opened a sample and it works really well. Why not upload to Github so people can contribute?

Fogh 12y ago
All of the samples seems to be from open source projects that already are on GitHub.
- matttthompson 12y ago
  And to be clear—these are all existing sample apps for open source Objective-C projects. The creator of this site does not appear to have done anything but gathered these up into zip files. The complete lack of attribution is misleading.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Anything preventing author or anyone else from putting in Github?
joshwa 12y ago
Downloading a giant zipfile with everything feels very 1998 (FILE_ID.DIZ anyone?)... Would be really helpful to have these split up into multiple files (multiple github repos would be even better).

matttthompson 12y ago

I don't understand why this is getting so much attention. This is nothing more than a couple zip files containing a few Objective-C open source projects that happen to have example projects. As far as I can tell, the only original contributions here are that the author tested the apps (in an old version of Xcode) and wrote vague descriptions of what those projects did. As @orta mentions in another comment, http://cocoapods.org http://cocoapods.org already has a canonical database of thousands of projects. And there are plenty of other sites that do a much better job of curating (and properly attributing) interesting projects. Edit: Link to original HN submission (2012), for anyone curious - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182483

pygy_ 12y ago
The title was changed. The original n=one gave more context: It used to be a commercial project by @thatusertwo, and he just made it free.
jlgosse 12y ago
Hilarious because the first item in the list is actually a copy of your project.

aaronbrethorst 12y ago

Also https://www.cocoacontrols.com https://www.cocoacontrols.com (n.b. I make Cocoa Controls)

joshavant 12y ago
Longtime user of your site! Thanks!
rememberlenny 12y ago
Great site! Email newsletter sign up at top of page is broken.
- aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  Much obliged. I'll get it fixed.

urda 12y ago

That website is just god awful. No, I don't want to download a freaking zip file and dig through it. I expected snippets and readable code on the site.

pbreit 12y ago
Maybe Github or Docco?

ConAntonakos 12y ago

My entire ocular system cried while trying to digest what the website was trying to convey to me.

chtoric 12y ago

the link appear down to me, here is the webcache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ioscodesamples.com/index.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ioscode...

rememberlenny 12y ago
I reuploaded it and placed it on github. Here is the HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485

fit2rule 12y ago

Well its gone, darn. Anyone get a mirror before it went poof?

rememberlenny 12y ago
I put it on github and added a readme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485

bilalel 12y ago

Here is the current status of the page: "I hadn't expect this to become so popular." With title: "The End" Hope page will comeback online soon.

rememberlenny 12y ago
The original page was just a link. I reuploaded the contents to github and linked it on this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330485