Paul Hudson

Paul Hudson

@twostraws.bsky.social

I write Swift and write about Swift, but most people prefer my dogs.

6.7K followers77 following542 posts

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Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Today I'm launching my new app, Hacktivate. It teaches real-world computer science skills through 240 "capture the flag" challenges, and works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac with one purchase. I've poured a ton of love into it, and I'd love to hear what you think 🙌 apps.apple.com/gb/app/hackt...

apps.apple.com‎Hacktivate: Capture the Flag‎Crack codes. Break firewalls. Conquer the map. Hacktivate is the ultimate cybersecurity challenge: a world map of 240 missions where every puzzle is built on real cybersecurity techniques hackers us...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Sunday Build with HWS+: Let's create an app designed to help kids build confidence in mathematics, with division remainders, styling polish, and a few clever SwiftUI techniques along the way. 🧮 #SundayBuild www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/live-st...

hackingwithswift.comFlash Math – Hacking with Swift+In this stream we'll build an app I originally designed for my kids, to help them build confidence in mathematics. Along the way we'll meet a couple of great iOS 17 APIs, explore styling in SwiftUI, a...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

For HWS+ subscribers: Swift Argument Parser makes it easy to build useful macOS command-line tools, and a JSON tidier is a great first project. This one can prettify, compress, sort keys, and write output to a file, all in surprisingly little code. www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/command...

hackingwithswift.comJSON Tidy – Hacking with Swift+JSON is one of the most common file formats we deal with, so we can write a little macOS utility to make it nicer to work with – compressing the data, formatting the data, and even sorting the key nam...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Bonus: Signing up for Kickstart Exchange also gives you Kickstart Signal (and vice versa!) – Signal lets you collect user requests right inside your app. Both are completely free, both are privacy-focused, and both use the same open-source SDK ✅ signal.kickstart.tools

signal.kickstart.toolsKickstart Signal: feature requests and voting for indie appsAdd feature requests, voting, and comments to your app with one SwiftUI view. Free, with every submission reviewed by you.
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

For HWS+ subscribers: Downloading data gets all the attention, but uploading Codable data cleanly is just as important. This walks through wrapping URLSession uploads with generics and Result for a much nicer API. www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/network...

hackingwithswift.comUploading Codable data – Hacking with Swift+In a previous article we already looked at a great way to download data using Combine, but in this article we’re going to examine the other side of the problem: uploading Codable data. Apple’s API her...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

I'm pleased to announce a new service for indie developers: Kickstart Signal, a feature request service you can embed in your app to track user requests, votes, comments, and more. Completely free, works on every Apple platform, and available today ✨ signal.kickstart.tools

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Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

If you're already using Kickstart Exchange – my free advertising network for indie developers – then you can start using Kickstart Signal immediately. Same login, same API key, same dashboard ✨ And if you aren't, what are you waiting for? 🚀 exchange.kickstart.tools

exchange.kickstart.toolsKickstart Exchange: free advertising for indie app developersYour app shows ads for other indie apps, and every two shown earn one view of yours. Free, with no user tracking.
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

I’ve spent 12 years helping developers build great apps through Hacking with Swift, for free. Building high-quality tools like Kickstart Exchange and now Kickstart Signal is the next step in that mission: helping you succeed. More users, better feedback, stronger apps – all free.

Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

I'm pleased to announce a new service for indie developers: Kickstart Signal, a feature request service you can embed in your app to track user requests, votes, comments, and more. Completely free, works on every Apple platform, and available today ✨ signal.kickstart.tools

Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

It takes just one line of code to add Kickstart Signal to your app, and users can immediately start submitting requests, or voting and commenting on others. It's built around user privacy, and packed with features you'll love:

Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

- Users submit requests; they aren't public until you approve them. - They can add comments/vote on requests. - Use your dashboard to mark features as in progress or completed, or post a developer reply. - On-device translation lets every user take part. - Free for everyone!

Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

For HWS+ subscribers: There's more to good networking than just fetching data. NWPathMonitor and URLSessionConfiguration let you respect the user's connection, wait for connectivity, and avoid expensive requests. www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/network...

hackingwithswift.comUser-friendly network access – Hacking with Swift+Anyone can write Swift code to fetch network data, but much harder is knowing how to write code to do it respectfully. In this article we’ll look at building a considerate network stack, taking into a...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Sunday Build with HWS+: Build a SwiftData app that monitors your Xcode build times, then calculates how much time and money you'd save by upgrading hardware. #SundayBuild www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/live-st...

hackingwithswift.comUpgrade your Mac – Hacking with Swift+In this stream we're going to build a SwiftUI and SwiftData app that monitors how long Xcode takes to build your projects, then uses that to calculate how much time and money you would save by upgradi...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

"But Paul, couldn't you have updated your skill without first using an iPhone Duo?" Sure I could, but that's not how I work – I want to see exactly what agents get wrong with real code on a real device, not guess and risk causing problems with your projects.

Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

For HWS+ subscribers: When JSON is messy or completely unstructured, Codable becomes more trouble than it's worth. A custom JSON type with @dynamicMemberLookup can let you dig through any structure using clean dot syntax. www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/working...

hackingwithswift.comParsing difficult JSON – Hacking with Swift+If you have nice, clean JSON then using Swift and Codable is like a dream come true. But what if you have messy JSON, or JSON where you really don’t know what you’ll receive ahead of time? In this art...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Sunday Build with HWS+: Why not try a deceptively simple SwiftUI game: tap the one green circle in a grid of red ones before time runs out, with multiple difficulty variations to keep things interesting. #SundayBuild www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/live-st...

hackingwithswift.comFlashlight – Hacking with Swift+In this stream we're going to build a trivial game with SwiftUI, but then look at ways we can make it more interesting through difficulty variations – there's so much room to experiment!
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

For HWS+ subscribers: A* isn't guaranteed to find the single perfect route, but it's fast, practical, and close enough to optimal that it's the go-to choice for path finding in both games and apps. www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/algorit...

hackingwithswift.comA* path finding – Hacking with Swift+The A* algorithm for path finding is not the perfect way to find an optimal route between two nodes in a graph, but it is either the best or darned close most of the time and that makes it a fantastic...
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Sunday Build with HWS+: Bake a slice of Pi! Create a macOS app that helps you memorize the digits of pi by mapping numbers to letters, then building stories from them. 🥧 #SundayBuild www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/live-st...

hackingwithswift.comSlice of Pi – Hacking with Swift+In this stream we're going to build a macOS app that helps you remember the digits of pi. The concept is simple, and a rough implementation is simple, but then we'll make it better!
Paul Hudson
@twostraws.bsky.social

Sunday Build with HWS+: Bake a slice of Pi! Create a macOS app that helps you memorize the digits of pi by mapping numbers to letters, then building stories from them. 🥧 #SundayBuild www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/live-st...

hackingwithswift.comSlice of Pi – Hacking with Swift+In this stream we're going to build a macOS app that helps you remember the digits of pi. The concept is simple, and a rough implementation is simple, but then we'll make it better!