Open Your Source

YAY! Today is a great day. I have been working on a small, yet deep, iOS component that allows iOS developers to easily add drop-in auto complete features to their apps. Maniac dev awesomely tested it out, and posted it on his blog.

Working on this project gave me a true insight on what it takes to write an open source project. I had to make sure that everything is clearly defined for the developers who’ll use it, and hopefully contribute back.

I tried as much as possible not to write ugly workarounds nor hacky code, that was a challenge as well. I almost had to refactor the whole thing each time I wrote a few lines of code. (Not to mention that every new feature I add must be properly planned to not screw the design).

Conclusion

Yeah! It’s a great experience writing an open source component, but let me let you in a little secret. I didn’t initially write it for fun, nor to use it in my apps. I actually wrote is as a test to get into Telly, which it passed :D