https://youngdynasty.net/ Recent content on Young Dynasty Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 13 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/go-emporter-go/ Fri, 13 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/go-emporter-go/ A little over a year ago, I launched Emporter to help web developers on the Mac live-share their web projects, without needing to deploy code or manage their own server(s). Emporter means to take away in French: developers use it to share their projects “on the go”. If you’re familiar with ngrok, it’s like that but with a native UI that designers can use, too. Here’s the twist: Emporter is really a collection of services and components, all of which are written in Go. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/radblock-deep-dive/ Thu, 13 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/radblock-deep-dive/ I should preface this by saying that I’m a huge fan of Safari. It feels super light, has a minimal interface and it doesn’t eat away at my battery – even if I’m streaming Netflix for a few hours (don’t judge me). About two years ago, Safari changed how its extensions worked: they must now be written using Apple’s native frameworks. And some time last year, Safari stopped loading extensions which didn’t migrate to the new system. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/radblock/ Sat, 08 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/radblock/ RadBlock is a Safari extension for macOS which helps you surf with less ads, trackers, and annoyances. Rather than striving for blocking perfection, its main focus is to preserve your battery life by using less resources, and to blend in with the Mac’s native ecosystem. And it does a killer job – it’s up to 200x more efficient than existing blockers. You can read all about it on the RadBlock Blog. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/the-sad-state-of-mac-app-distribution/ Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:30:00 +0200 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/the-sad-state-of-mac-app-distribution/ Recent versions of macOS have sought to improve the integrity and security of the platform by asserting more control over applications. Since Mac OS X 10.8, applications without a valid signature were no longer opened without user intervention. Now, starting with macOS 10.14.5, the same holds true for apps which aren’t notarized by Apple. As the security of the platform has tightened, the tools used by developers to manage updates have become antiquated and insecure. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/introducing-ydcommandkit/ Wed, 22 May 2019 19:48:19 +0200 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/introducing-ydcommandkit/ I recently created a command-line interface (CLI) create secure URLs to the Mac by automating Emporter.app. Quite naturally, I didn’t want to write my own code to do perform the basics, such as parsing command-line arguments or handling options in a type-safe way. Much to my surprise, there were not any viable libraries that could help me do this. Seriously. Let me elaborate. Our collective effort, as Apple developers, over the past few years has been largely focused on Swift. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/gdpr-is-an-asset/ Mon, 04 Mar 2019 13:00:39 +0100 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/gdpr-is-an-asset/ The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is a regulation in European law which essentially defines how a user’s personal information must be handled. If a company serves Europeans and it does not follow these regulations, it is at risk for receiving hefty fines. GDPR itself seems to catch a lot of negative attention within the developer community. I must say, my initial reactions were mostly negative as well. Won’t these regulations just add more friction when launching small projects? https://youngdynasty.net/posts/writing-mac-apps-in-go/ Tue, 29 Jan 2019 20:05:45 +0100 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/writing-mac-apps-in-go/ Go makes it easy to create safe, reliable and efficient software. Concurrency is part of the language, making otherwise complicated code more intuitive to write. It can compile binaries for any non-obscure platform and has a quite capable standard library with a lively developer community. Although Swift is cross platform, it’s perhaps most commonly used to develop apps for Apple’s platforms. Maybe I’m just not very clever, but even after years of using Grand Central Dispatch (“GCD”), I still find it hard to write maintainable multi-threaded code1 for macOS or iOS. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/introducting-emporter/ Mon, 21 Jan 2019 23:22:39 +0100 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/introducting-emporter/ After 18 months of development, I’m happy (and relieved!) to publicly announce Emporter. Choose any folder on your Mac, and Emporter will serve a URL that you can share anywhere. If you have your own HTTP server running locally, you can use that, too. You don’t have to deploy any code. Simply save your work from your favorite editor, and it’s live. https://youngdynasty.net/posts/new-year-who-this/ Thu, 03 Jan 2019 19:22:39 +0100 https://youngdynasty.net/posts/new-year-who-this/ A few days ago, Young Dynasty officially became a registered company in France. Although there’s still quite a bit of paperwork to do in order to launch Emporter, there are plenty of things I’ve learned along the way that I’d like to share with the community. This year, I intend to post about interesting engineering solutions, product development, and anything else related to launching, managing and using Emporter. As a one-person company with one product to launch, it’s going to be an exciting year. https://youngdynasty.net/about/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://youngdynasty.net/about/ Young Dynasty is a one-person company ran by me, Mikey. I’m a full-stack software developer currently located in Paris, France. I’ve been writing code for over a decade on multiple platforms. Aside from freelancing, I manage, develop, and design two apps: RadBlock and Emporter. Before that, I worked on Espresso. In my free time, I climb rocks, do yoga, eat burritos and go on adventures with my wife and dog.