Lori M Olson OPED — Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion
In the previous issue of DRD I talked about AI, but in general terms. This time I’d like to talk about a specific instance of AI, namely the Warp AI terminal app. I was intrigued when a friend from Mastodon talked about how helpful Warp was when working at the command-line. Since I do a lot of Ruby development from the command-line, I thought I should give it a try on my next research project.
The details of my project are outlined below in FITS, but I can say that with the assistance of Warp’s AI, I managed to complete all my work—at least thus far—without leaving the terminal, with the exception of clicking through to some issue links on Github to read about workarounds for a particular error I was experiencing. I managed to keep focused on my project while using Warp, which has definitely been a personal challenge lately.
I highly recommend you try Warp out although, alas, it’s only available for Mac at this time. The link and image above employ my personal invitation, just so you know, and I’ll get a—woo hoo! 🥳 —free t-shirt that I’ll probably never wear. But only if ten people download and try using this link. No pressure. 😉
FITS — Featured in the School
One of my long standing TODO’s has been getting my app, WIMBY, back in the AppStore. It seems like every time I sit down with a free afternoon or evening to work on it, another issue pops up.
My current obstacle is motion-provisioning. Having a seamless deploy process to my device and the AppStore is highly desirable, when I don’t have a lot of time to mess around on a side project.
I checked out the status of the current attempt at ‘fixing’ the gem, which mostly revolves around using the fastlane API. So then I decided I needed to know more about how fastlane works now.
Turns out, using today’s fastlane in the context of your RubyMotion project is almost as seamless as using motion-provisioning used to be. Check out this Gist ➡️ of my working notes (click the image to see the whole thing). They end with ‘cackles with glee’, so you know how I felt about my experiment.
After more reading and experimenting, I decided that instead of trying to keep a separate gem wrapping the fastlane API up to date, we should probably be using the fastlane plugin system to make RubyMotion a full-fledged participant in the fastlane ecosystem. I’ve set up a repo, with an initial roadmap. If anyone would like to help out, feel free to check out the roadmap and open an issue to discuss what you’re thinking of working on.
Meanwhile, I have to get back to recording an update for RubyMotion Jumpstart’s deployment section!
TALK — Talk of the Tech
Here are this issue’s selections from two of the finer RubyMotion/DRGTK chat spaces:
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Discord — We have an admission to make: whenever we get a notification about a ‘super simple game’ we’re kind of embarassed to admit how ofter the game play totally stumps us. But we finally have to say that this time, the promised simplicity is actually delivered and we were able to follow the logic right out of the box (for the most part). If you’re in the same boat—that is, gaming challenged— give AniMatch from Dominic Freeston a try.
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Slack — Back in issue 126, we pointed out a discussion about the ticklish problems with the use of
gen_bridge_metadatawhen combined with Apple Silicon-based hardware. You get the error as follows but then the conversation inconveniently disappears as a consequence of Slack’s free portal limit. We figured it should get documented here again, in case anyone else runs into it.
/Library/RubyMotion/lib/BridgeSupport3/System/Library/BridgeSupport/ruby-2.6/bridgesupportparser.bundle' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'x86_64', need 'arm64'))</small>
The solution isn't anywhere near as scary looking [according to Amir](https://motioneers.slack.com/archives/C055RDLS0/p1675833761579029?utm_source=dragonrubydispatch.com): simply make sure your terminal is running with x86_64 architecture as per:
$env /usr/bin/arch -x86_64 /bin/zsh —-loginAPP — All Things App
Here’s a friendly reminder that with iOS 16 that if you want to install your in-development apps on your device, you’ll need to turn on Developer Mode. But this toot 💨 alerted us to the fact it might have consequences. 😱 Proceed with caution.
SPOT — Spotlight On…
If you blow an hour this week watching a presentation on YouTube, prompted by one of Amir’s toots 💨 may we suggest Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way by Jeff Vogel, Spiderweb’s founder. Amir figures—and we agree—it’s must see TV for all indie game devs out there. Definitely worth (as Jeff says) “keeping you from your day drinking”. 🍸 At least for an hour or so.
Moving right along, remember that kids’ party game Telephone? You know the one where somebody whispers a phrase to one person, and then they whisper it to the next and the next and so on. Then, at the end, you compare how the phrase started out as compared to how it ended up—often unrecognizably different! Apparently, that’s not so in the world of game development. RoboSpider was handed from one game dev to another 13 times and the end result is actually pretty good! Check out the trailer†.
†By the way the soundtrack in the trailer is a stroke of incongruous genius—well done to whoever came up with that. It's kind of like [Blue Danube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoSYsNADtY&utm_source=dragonrubydispatch.com) in Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey.
GAME — All Things Gaming
In yet another recent toot 💨 —this one from Nick Lockwood—we were reminded of the fact that Mac Source Ports is a thing: “All the Mac games from my youth (and the DOS games I was envious of) packaged up as shiny native binaries for Apple Silicon”. There, that made reading this far truly worth it, didn’t it?
TWIL — This Week I Learned…
Given this section got short shrift last issue, here’s a double dose:
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Self-healing networks? Pfff…that’s child’s play compared to what the ancient Roman’s were doing 2000 years ago: self-healing concrete. This phascinating phact comes to us by way of a toot 💨 from Christopher Phin.
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Some say there’s nothing new under the sun, particularly when it comes to the noble pursuit of mathematics. However, if you count yourselves amongst that number, you’d be wrong. A new numbering system was devised by Inuit schoolchildren in Alaska—Kaktovik numerals—and they are about to be employed in no less a place than Silicon Valley, according to a recent article in Scientific American.
Amazing, on both counts. We stand on the shoulders of giants and walk amongst them.
HAHA — And They All Laughed
Forget the accomplishments of ancient Romans and Inuit schoolchildren in Alaska: we dare to dream of the truly lousy code we might yet write.
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“It’s difficult. You try and stretch as an actor, do Strinberg, O’Neill, but all they want is Course laid in, Captain.” — George Takei (from The Big Bang Theory).