Eli Perkins.

February 13, 2014

Get Off My Lawn

There’s been a lot of drama among the iOS community these days relating to a variety of topics. From how Xcode can’t handle my scale, to Objective-C needing a replacement, to usage of Cocoapods.

Almost every tweet, every blog post, every Quora answer I would read really only showed me one thing: the entitlement that many of these opinions carried, as if their opinion was not just an opinion, but rather fact.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, sure. But to bash others for their opinion is just wrong.

The way I’ve noticed a lot of iOS dev’s acting lately has been a lot like an old man telling everyone to get off his lawn. Different things work for different people. There’s no need to force your own opinions upon others. Listen to others and accept what they have to say. Form your own opinion based on it. But stop with the petty subtweets, stop with the bashing of the work of others, stop with the outcry of how shitty our tools are.

If you don’t like something, don’t use it. Simple as that. Facebook doesn’t like Xcode, so they don’t use it. Jeff Lamarche doesn’t like Cocoapods, so he doesn’t use it. Ash Furrow doesn’t like the current state of Objective-C, …so I guess he’s stuck with it (I kid, there’s alternatives out there that he’s trying like Eero, RubyMotion, Xamarin etc., too). My point is, everyone is different.

I’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics this week and an entertaining bit for me has been Johnny Weir. Johnny Weir’s outfits everyday have been off the wall, flamboyant and attention-grabbing. Watching him as he attempts to make a statement in Russia, voicing his opinion, his beliefs, in a way that doesn’t harm others, has been awesome to follow.

We could take a note from Johnny Weir, and voice our opinions in a way that doesn’t attack others. Start making cool things with the tools you like. Start making cool tools that help others make cool things in the way that you work. Speak with your apps and code instead of 140 characters.


Eli Perkins

Written by Eli Perkins, a mobile engineer based in New York City. Say hello on Twitter.