Daniel Hooper
@DanielcHooper
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Graphics/low-level/game programmer. Made https://t.co/8vlhOlfcTi. Former Apple Engineer: ・Made the first iOS photo editing tools ・Invented iOS cursor gesture
Joined October 2011
⭐️ New Post: Animating Rick and Morty One Pixel at a Time. An interactive guide on making 2D animations on the GPU.
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Apple didn’t give me a bonus for inventing the cursor gesture; I made the prototype before they hired me: . The iOS keyboard team called me and said my video resulted in the most duped feature request in the history of Apple’s bug tracker, Radar.
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There are actually *no* programming languages that express "how computers work"! Not even C. The operating system runs other programs 'between' your lines. CPUs execute both branches of ifs, and magically run multiple lines of your code at once. Your code is just a suggestion.
@DanielcHooper C is how computers actually work. Learn it and move on to another language if you want.
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What ideas in computer science are universally considered good? . My list:.- Arrays (1942?).- Functions (1947).- Hashmaps (1953).- The stack (1957).- Processes (1958).- Virtual memory (1959).- TCP/IP (1974).
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How I made a 3D modeler in C. (4 min). Originally shown at Handmade Seattle conf.
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Even if Object Oriented Programming wasn't slow (it is), reading a OOP-heavy code base sucks because the logic is broken into little pieces and spread all over. Makes it hard to understand the system as a whole.
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After almost two years of work, I'm proud to release @principleapp - a prototyping tool you can love. http://t.co/X50sSJcIoR.
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People don't understand that C's limited feature set is GOOD, and not something you grow out of:. • Syntax doesn't hide expensive/complex operations.• Focus on coding and not language trivia.• Compiles fast. No other mainstream language understands this.
@DanielcHooper If you’re looking for very general knowledge as a beginner, C is a great way to learn the fundamentals and problems that come with systems programming. That said, I wouldn’t stick with it once you’re comfortable. Rust and other langs have lots of great features! 😊.
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Imagine getting married in a graphics programmer’s test scene (Sponza Palace is a real place in Croatia)
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It's weird how Apple continues to double down on Swift when even the language's creator says that the type system design is flawed: fundamentally slow and impossible to provide good error messages for.
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I worked on this! Team was 1 designer, 5 engineers, 1 HR manager, 1 project manager, and a few QA folks. Early versions displayed your albums sitting on glass shelves that were tinted slightly green. In a design review, Jony Ive criticized the green tint because "Glass is only.
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Yesterday Principle 3.3 shipped. In it, we ported all Swift to ObjC. Swift made 8% of code, but took 41% of compile time and 55% of app size.
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To design better: observe people using the design. To program better: observe a CPU executing the code.
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@jisiguo I made the prototype video, but did not work on the implementation at all during my time at Apple. I was on the Photos team.
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Knowing that the CPU is doing *way* more than what C/assembly exposes is useful even in high level languages like Javascript or Python. js example:
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@fortran_enjoyer This debate's practical implication is that if programmers believe C/assembly are what is really happening in the circuitry then they will miss out on whole classes of performance optimizations.
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Next time a programmer says performance doesn't matter, ask them why their phone and laptop are so new. 🍿.
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My 3D Modeler article was #1 on Hacker News and got 20,000 visitors in the first 2 days. Glad people are enjoying it
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I've been working on Principle for 4 years now, and every release is a labor of love. It means a lot that designers trust my software with their work and get excited about every release.
Available now: Principle 4, with supercharged video, animation scrubbing, custom curves, a new video exporter, and way more.
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New Post: "Apple didn't fix Swift's biggest flaw".I explain why Swift compile times are so bad, according to Swift's creator, Chris Lattner.
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What do you recommend to someone that wants to learn systems programming? . Rust has a lot of upfront complexity, C has a bad standard library, and Zig is still evolving. I’m leaning towards recommending C with Raylib.
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I made a brute force approach to 2D area lights: each pixel gets its color by shooting 300 rays in all directions, seeing what color they hit, and averaging. Looks nice! Now to speed it up with Radiance Cascades.
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Took more than a year of work to create web assembly/webgl versions of all the features that Principle gets "for free" from Core Animation and Core Text - but I'm really happy with the result.
🥳 Principle 6 with Share to Web is out now! Share your designs to Android, Windows, Linux, macOS and iOS with one click! Learn More:
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.@austinkleon describes that point as the "Dark night of the soul". Fitting. http://t.co/EHf4z1dpWd.
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I hung out in Figma's offices for a little while to get this working, it was my first time working in an office in 4 years! I had to re-learn what volume to speak in an open office plan 😂.
Yes the rumors are true. Principle + Figma are in cahoots 🤠. With our new integration, add advanced animations in @principleapp to bring your Figma designs to life 🐣. Read more:
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@FlohOfWoe @DanielcHooper Yes. C is a good model for how assembly works, but assembly is a bad model for how computers work.
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I found a way to implement defer in C with a combination of cleanup attributes and blocks. Pretty useful for freeing memory and closing file handles. source:.
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@NyxXeres No. You could write a kernel in binary machine code and the CPU would still run instructions out order and prefetch memory, all without your knowledge or control.
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So much of design (UI, API, Industrial, etc) comes down to getting the common use case right and not overemphasizing the edge cases.
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Tried modeling something organic. Hit a gimbal lock bug when making the hands/feet so I gave up on that. But I think this is pretty good for a 3D program made in 6 days! Need to fix a few bugs and then get it in the hands of some real artists
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I wanted to watch a movie, so I asked the GPT-3 AI for recommendations🤯
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This feature is written in C and compiled to web assembly. This is the first release to use arena allocators extensively. Total game changer. It's amazing that a technique as simple as arenas can so profoundly improve both performance and ease of development.
Today we introduce the first in a series of improvements to sharing: Overview Mode!. Explore and examine your designs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.
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Swift is an incredibly complicated language – almost as if features were crammed into it just so that code on a keynote slide *looks* simple.
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When I'm struggling to solve an engineering or design problem, It's usually because I don't understand the problem well enough. Trying to remind myself "A problem clearly stated is half solved".
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@memethanjc @uralbayhan0 Genuine answer: @Freerunnering was inspired to make swipeselection after he saw my video.
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@benhouston3d I considered including that in my list, but there are so many variations, inappropriate uses, and complexity, I found it hard to say Databases are just one idea or universally good — It's a hashmap turned to 11.
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My most used design tool is definitely Cmd+Control+Shift+4.
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I ported my quake level viewer from OpenGL to sokol_gfx.h as a test of the library. I love it. Never going back to plain OpenGL. Great work by @FlohOfWoe
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Compare Swift to Zig, which has a very small syntax while still having a more powerful generic and build time evaluation features.
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Android’s version of this, Gboard, and the iOS jailbreak SwipeSelection all happened after my YouTube prototype video was posted on May 2, *2012*.
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Heres the internal presentation mentioning how Swift's type checker design results in long compile times and unintuitive error messages, by the creator of Swift.
New Post: "Apple didn't fix Swift's biggest flaw".I explain why Swift compile times are so bad, according to Swift's creator, Chris Lattner.
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If you're interested in hearing Principle's origin story, I talk about it here.
So awesome to chat with @danielchooper about prototyping, design tools, side projects and more @designdetailsfm!
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Honored to have @cooper rate @principleapp so highly on their design tools comparison. http://t.co/hXugQ2RV7M
http://t.co/TvW29NsTkS.
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@fabiofranchino Theres a difference between the inherent complexity of the problem you're trying to solve, and the artificial complexity you created by the way you wrote the code. The *whole point* of OOP is to break up logic and data into lots of little objects and have them all talk to each.
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I just updated my recent post to include tips to fix slow Swift compile times, better explain Swift's type constraint solver, and address Hacker News nit-picks. I think it's a solid improvement on the original post. Read here:
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Apple: We spent 5 billion dollars making a chip that is 8% faster.Programmer: I spent 5 minutes making a function that won’t finish before the heat death of the universe.
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Dear Web People, stop making things animate in as I scroll. It's distracting and it's not going to age well.
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New Post: Good Ideas in Computer Science — Ideas every programmer likes and why Garbage Collection and Object Oriented Programming don't count.
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@FlohOfWoe The CPU also chops up assembly instructions into even smaller bits and runs those.
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3D Touch is doomed to become hamburger drawer 2.0: A place for extra features that no one will discover.
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Took an entire month, and a lot of phone calls with the review board, but they finally approved Principle Mirror!
Principle Mirror is now on the App Store!
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My 3D modeler post is getting 500 visitors a day, but the video that goes with it gets 10,000 views a day! So my upcoming posts are also going to get accompanying videos.
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Websites don’t need a dumb progress bar at the top of the page to show how far through the article you are, the browser already has that. It’s called the scroll bar.
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@meoyawn 1. Add a flag to swiftc that switches off bidirectional type checking. 2. Make a feature that updates existing code with any type annotations that are now necessary to compile. 3. Update all sample code so it compiles with the flag. 4. Enable the flag by default for new.
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This past weekend I gave a talk about Principle and why I created it.
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I enjoy engineering and product design more than making marketing materials, but I had a blast making the new devices for the Principle website. Amazing what you can do with a few gradients and shadows.
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I'm sad to hear the Apple Infinite Loop store is closing. My first office at Apple was on the floor above it. It was cool to work on something and later go downstairs to the store and see people using it.
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Reserve animations for communicating things like hierarchy, directing attention, and feedback on interactions.
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@Love2Code Depending on the specific microcontroller you might still have a memory hierarchy doing things without your knowledge. But yeah the more exotic stuff with instruction reordering and speculative execution probably won’t be happening behind your back.
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@PrometheusHides It's not the operating system that runs your code out of order and executes both branches of your ifs — the chip does that all on its own.
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Hardware is cool and all, but with today's software practices I'd settle for updating the Alan Kay quote:. "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware". to:. "People who are really serious about software should write their own software".
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@andy_kelley using Zig for side projects has made working in my main C project almost unbearable. Nice work :).
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@zjpea @fortran_enjoyer This talk touches on a few: Sections 5 and 6 in "Computer systems: A programmer's perspective" are good. This course goes even deeper, but you'll have to quit your job and say goodbye to your friends to get through it all.
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You can now try my made-in-a-week 3D modeler in your browser: Doesn't have saving or undo yet. Let me know if you make anything cool!
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@samxpatterson "I call it my billion-dollar mistake…At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object-oriented language. My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the.
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We’re looking to hire a graphics programmer to work with us on @PrincipleApp. Description below. DM for additional details. RTs appreciated.
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4 of the 5 design tools represented by this 2014 panel no longer exist. Was a crazy time for design tools back then.
@nlevin @jasonfried @Kazanjy Noah, one of my all time fav Design Leaders, ironically ;). I still remember Google Form in 2014 🫶🏽
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In macOS Mojave, toolbar icons shake while being edited, just like the iOS home screen!
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It's been a wild year.
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@PeterAJepson "operating systems" contain many ideas, what specifically is good about them? I picked Processes and Virtural memory.
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Apple picked my game Percepto as game of the week in 2011 thanks, in part, because I literally did go door to door on my university campus asking people to play it. Helped find bugs and smooth out the difficulty ramp.
you're having trouble marketing your app. but jehova's witnesses aren't having trouble marketing their religion. have you gone door to door and asked people if they'd be interested in your app? how many sales would you have to do, door to door?. have you really tried??.
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I'm told that my iPad keyboard prototype design was the most-duped bug in the history of Apple. and now its in iOS 9.
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My 3D Modeler: a single c file with 1628 lines. 17 functions. (+raylib & raygui). Executable size: 1.1 Mb.
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Interesting to see parts of Principle get ripped off by people who don't understand *why* they're that way, and so inadvertently mess it up.
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@PeterAJepson Ok, yeah I think architecture-agnostic programming language deserves a place on the list.
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@datenwolf Yeah I regret including tcp/ip on my list. Wish I had included ideas they use rather than referring to the specific implementation.
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If you like graphics programming, check out my recent video about making a 3D modeler from scratch:
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