Edge Cases

Edge Cases episodes:

• 04.16.2015

  Edge Cases 128: Everybody's Got a Bad Parser

  Andrew on Carthage and Wolf on text as a symptom. Plus: ending the show.

  
• 04.02.2015

  Edge Cases 127: A Foundation of Chaos

  Wolf on strict vs flexible foundations and Andrew on React Native.

  
• 03.26.2015

  Edge Cases 126: Out-Microsofting Microsoft

  Andrew on how Apple is the new Microsoft and Wolf on real-time systems.

  
• 03.12.2015

  Edge Cases 125: Gradient of Information

  Wolf on the why of software change and Andrew on GUI debugging tools, real and imagined.

  
• 03.05.2015

  Edge Cases 124: Old Apple Meets New Apple

  Andrew on Apple's Swift framework problem and Wolf on bitcode for software distribution.

  
• 02.26.2015

  Edge Cases 123: What’s the Deal with NSInteger?

  Wolf on branches vs feature flags and Andrew (belatedly) on Apple's 64-bit transition.

  
• 02.19.2015

  Edge Cases 122: Working on the Other Side of the Country

  Andrew and Wolf on working from home.

  
• 02.05.2015

  Edge Cases 121: The Official Container Type of the Edge Cases Podcast

  Wolf on subpixel text rendering and Andrew on linked lists.

  
• 01.22.2015

  Edge Cases 120: Don't Copy That Floppy

  Andrew on weak references and Wolf on physical-access malware like Thunderstrike.

  
• 01.15.2015

  Edge Cases 119: Enough Flags to Be a United Nations

  Wolf on state machines and Andrew on std::swap vs. functional programming.

  
• 01.08.2015

  Edge Cases 118: Don't Get Cocky, Kid

  Andrew on code comment-based documentation and Wolf on future-proof data formats.

  
• 01.01.2015

  Edge Cases 117: Something Was Not Going Right

  Wolf on events vs threads and Andrew on our Overcast feed issues.

  
• 12.18.2014

  Edge Cases 116: Lingual Advancement

  Andrew on Xcode 6's unit testing improvements and Wolf on his lingual crisis of faith.

  
• 12.11.2014

  Edge Cases 115: Light on Theory

  Wolf on followup and Andrew on converting a small project to Swift.

  
• 12.06.2014

  Edge Cases 114: Pyramid of Doom

  Andrew on hackathons and Wolf on .NET's Async/Await.

  
• 11.20.2014

  Edge Cases 113: Who Watches the WatchKit?

  Andrew talks with Wolf about the newly-released Apple WatchKit SDK.

  
• 11.13.2014

  Edge Cases 112: Naiveté as a Service

  Andrew on who's making money on the iOS App Store and Wolf on using academic resources in commercial software development.

  
• 11.09.2014

  Edge Cases 111: “Here Be Dragons”–Style Comments

  Wolf on code comments and Andrew on Appetize.io.

  
• 10.23.2014

  Edge Cases 110: Scripting with C

  Andrew on the Swift section of John Siracusa's Yosemite review and Wolf on Playgrounds for Objective-C.

  
• 10.16.2014

  Edge Cases 109: Race the Beam

  Wolf on memory debugging and Andrew on AsyncDisplayKit.

  
• 10.09.2014

  Edge Cases 108: Playing Jenga with Microsoft Word

  Andrew on sample projects for bug reports and Wolf on rolling your own server backend.

  
• 10.02.2014

  Edge Cases 107: A Furrier Jony Ive

  Wolf on Stream Control Transmission Protocol and Andrew on Apple's (growing?) tendency toward luxury products.

  
• 09.27.2014

  Edge Cases 106: Flappy Kit

  Andrew on Sprite Kit and Wolf on Macs as servers.

  
• 09.11.2014

  Edge Cases 105: Demonolithization

  Wolf on mogenerator 1.28 and Andrew on ARC debugging.

  
• 09.04.2014

  Edge Cases 104: It Is Great for Robots

  Andrew on data-driven testing and Wolf on Romantic Versioning vs Semantic Versioning.

  
• 08.31.2014

  Edge Cases 103: Microcosm of Security

  Wolf on Fat Pointers and Andrew on using Swift enums for representing errors.

  
• 08.21.2014

  Edge Cases 102: The Grubby Particulars of the Hardware

  Andrew on size classes and Wolf on field-programmable gate arrays.

  
• 08.14.2014

  Edge Cases 101: A Program That Runs on Metal

  Wolf on Unikernels and Andrew on Swift Access Control.

  
• 08.09.2014

  Edge Cases 100: Apps for iWatch and Apple TV

  Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the third-party apps that might be feasible on Apple's unusual devices, the hypothetical iWatch and the Apple TV. Plus: the future of Edge Cases (hint: there is one).

  
• 07.30.2014

  Edge Cases 99: Swift Is a Really Good Thing and a Step Back

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about the upsides (it will help advance the industry at large) and downsides (its disturbing lack of dynamism) of Swift.

  
• 07.24.2014

  Edge Cases 98: When the Bubble Bursts

  Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the current tech bubble: is it one? Is it web or mobile, or both? Is it like the 90s dot-com bubble? Plus: the tech industry in San Francisco, and Andrew's tips for surviving...

  
• 07.17.2014

  Edge Cases 97: The Dynamics and Politics of Code Reuse

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about the dynamics and politics of code reuse: from the complexities of the simple case to the control issues of relying on Apple's code.

  
• 07.12.2014

  Edge Cases 96: “Refactoring Sucks!”

  Andrew Pontious talks to Wolf Rentzsch about refactoring, including Martin Fowler's influential book, what ASTs are and aren't, and Andrew's time working on the refactoring feature in Xcode.

  
• 07.05.2014

  Edge Cases 95: Conflict-free Replicated Data Types

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious Conflict-free Replicated Datatypes (CRDTs), an exciting new suite of simple data types that are explicitly designed for distributed data storage. Also: CAP theorem, eventual consistency, and Indiana Jones.

  
• 06.21.2014

  Edge Cases 94: What's New in Xcode 6

  Andrew Pontious takes advantage of Apple's looser WWDC NDA to talk with Wolf Rentzsch about some of the new features in the prerelease version of Xcode 6.

  
• 06.14.2014

  Edge Cases 93: The Culture Didn't Change First

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about technical culture: how various technologies are associated with beliefs and their priorities. Examples include Linux, Perl, Python, the Web, and of course Apple and Swift.

  
• 06.03.2014

  Edge Cases 92: Edge Cases Live

  Wolf Rentzsch and Andrew Pontious record before a live audience at AltLabs during WWDC. Topics: avoiding Sherlocking, seriousness/elegance vs. fun/extensibility at Apple, the "tidal wave" of third-party developers (Wolf) and Swift as a half-step (Andrew).

  
• 05.08.2014

  Edge Cases 91: Our Broken Job Interview Process

  During Wolf's continuing hiatus, second guest cohost Ashley Nelson-Hornstein talks with Andrew Pontious about how tech industry job interviews don't work, and what can be done to fix them.

  
• 04.27.2014

  Edge Cases 90: Closed Captions and Subtitles

  As Wolf takes an extended hiatus, first guest cohost Justin Kaufman talks with Andrew Pontious about how you use text and audio to describe video, such as closed captions, subtitles, and descriptive audio. Also: many contributions by Andrew’s cat, sorry!

  
• 04.19.2014

  Edge Cases 89: Multipeer Connectivity Is a Terrible Name

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about Apple's new promising but troubled Multipeer Connectivity framework and his new app that takes advantage of it: Rumor Monger.

  
• 04.12.2014

  Edge Cases 88: Tuple for Your Thoughts?

  Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the simplest of things, the tuple: what it is, how it is used in other languages (specifically Python), and how, in an alternate universe, it could bring some sanity to Cocoa error handling.

  
• 04.04.2014

  Edge Cases 87: JavaScript Plus Square Brackets

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to guest cohost Gus Mueller about Cocoa Script. An evolution of his earlier effort, JSTalk, Cocoa Script is Gus's sane Mac app scripting alternative to AppleScript, based on JavaScript with Objective-C-style extensions.

  
• 03.29.2014

  Edge Cases 86: Andrew’s Blogroll in the Post-Blog Era

  Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about the developer blogs he follows via RSS: the ones that have died/gone fallow/transformed, the ones he's added recently, and the ones that seem to be trying to replicate Apple's tutorials and documentation.

  
• 03.23.2014

  Edge Cases 85: A Fan of Ravioli Code

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about programming pasta: disorganized "spaghetti" code, multi-layered "lasagna" code, and conceptually-separated "ravioli" code (his favorite). Bonus: new GitHub project!

  
• 03.15.2014

  Edge Cases 84: A Couple of Maxims, a Couple of Aphorisms

  Andrew Pontious talks to Wolf Rentzsch about the three maxims he gleaned from Evan Doll’s interview on the Debug podcast: code is a liability, ship the right bugs, and (paraphrased) don’t impose unneeded project methodologies.

  
• 03.08.2014

  Edge Cases 83: Floating Point Numbers Are a Leaky Abstraction

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about floating point numbers: how they work, why they're weird, and when you definitely shouldn't use them (hint: mo money mo problems).

  
• 03.01.2014

  Edge Cases 82: Asset Catalogs

  Andrew Pontious stumps Wolf Rentzsch not once, but repeatedly, by talking about asset catalogs, new in Xcode 5. But in turn *he* is stumped attempting to backport them to earlier OSes.

  
• 02.23.2014

  Edge Cases 81: The Only Cool Thing About PDF

  Wolf Rentzsch tries to keep up with Andrew "The Joneses" Pontious and introduces JRPDFLabel, his new…*innovative* project that allow you to use custom fonts in Interface Builder without having to bundle the entire font with your Mac app.

  
• 02.15.2014

  Edge Cases 80: Xcode Templates

  Andrew Pontious, with guest cohost Josh Johnson, talks about Xcode project and file templates.

  
• 02.08.2014

  Edge Cases 79: ClickToFlash: Behind the Music

  Wolf Rentzsch talks to Andrew Pontious about how he unexpectedly came to lead the popular and award-winning Safari plugin ClickToFlash, and how, after a wild ride, the project both ended and continued on.