I always knew that working on this app would take a lot of time but I definitely underestimated the amount of things I would need to build before a solid public release. As a long time user of macOS, I never really thought about all the tiny features each app has, things like menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, Touch Bar support and so forth.
Milestone
Another interesting thing happened recently, I used SameSame to help debug SameSame which felt pretty surreal. For me, it harkens back to the WWDC ‘16 presentation where the presenter showed Xcode Visual Debugger debugging Xcode. I tweeted about it later that day and sometime after that, I found this photo inside a Cupertino office where I was interviewing.
Performance
I’ve spent most of the time debugging the app with preset test data that I forgot to use real text files to test performance. Turns out that the app was really bad on performance with code source files. This lead me to firing up Instruments.app and identifying some memory leaks and unnecessary looping. Turns out that drawing a lot of boxes and shapes in draw(rect:) is pretty expensive (duh, Andyy).
New Designer
I’m super excited that Corey Ginnivan came on board to help with the visual experience and design for the app. I like the fact that we’re both two people from Perth, Australia which can help bolster the image that yes, awesome stuff is being made in Perth too. Take that Melbourne and Sydney.
New Logo, App Icon and Website
SameSame
A modern text diffing app for Mac