Cocoa & Coffee

“What’s up?” is probably what I’d say to a friend I haven’t seen in a very long time. I haven’t posted since February and I feel quite bad about it, mostly because I was planning to post weekly in 2019. It’s only natural to me that I start this article with the same question, which takes me back to my last post, episode 3 of the “Zero to hero” series and all that that happened since then.

2019 was to me a year of great improvement on many plans. With regard to iOS development, I learnt a lot about animations and wrote much cleaner and testable code than before. The project I’m currently involved with looks great and I’m extremely happy to be a part of it, working with an awesome team.

Aside from work, I started exercising regularly (well, almost). I do my workouts at home, which take between 20 and 40 minutes. For this I use Freeletics, a free sports app that has a coach feature (this one is paid) that generates your workouts based on your performance that’s gathered after an initial assessment form plus a week of trial workouts.

They are functional trainings that require no equipment. There are video and text explanations of each exercise. I haven’t built much muscle mass, but it improved my overall endurance and muscle definition. It really depends on which coach program you choose, your diet and dedication to it, but I think that it clearly serves its purpose and I recommend it to anyone. It’s great for anyone who doesn’t have too much time at their disposal.

If you want to subscribe to the coach feature and you want to support me, just use this referral link and you’ll get 20% off. I’m not endorsed by Freeletics in any way, I’m just sharing it as I was very pleased with how it improved my life.

I haven’t been really committed to the app in the past 2 months, unfortunately. Combine this with the fact that desk work kinda makes you forget about yourself and you’ll start developing back pain. It got so bad for me that I had to take some physio and kinetotherapy sessions. There was one thing I learnt from this – make sure you get up for at least 10 minutes every hour and try to walk as much as possible. It’s the bare minimum you can do and I for one will sure follow this from now on.

Other improvements I would mention but I would not go into much detail as it would make a way too long article would be in my diet, the place where I live, and yeah, I developed a new hobby (never too late for that!) – comic books. Leaving 2019 behind, let’s look into 2020 and what plans I have for myself and this blog.

First of all, since SwiftUI came out, I’m planning to go through everything and start building some apps with it. I will definitely write some articles on my experience with it. It’s the new direction for iOS apps and I suggest that anyone who is an iOS dev should do the same.

With regard to my blog, I’ll try to respect my last year’s resolution and post weekly. Not only that, I will double down on it and will make “From 0 to hero” a video series. I will post the next episode – if all goes well – the next week on my Youtube channel.

I am also resuming my Freeletics workouts and I’m planning that by the end of the year I will be able to do a full HELIOS workout in under 50 minutes. If I manage to do that, I will double down on that and force myself to do it under 40 minutes.

Finally, if all goes well, by the end of the year I’ll have moved in my own place.

Also here’s a picture of tonight’s sky: