I just got back from my 9th Dev World conference.
I just got back from my 9th Dev World conference.
And I just want to say: the Apple dev community is like none other I’ve experienced.
A few years ago — counts… oh gosh, 8 years — I left full-time iOS development. I ventured into backend Node/TypeScript/Azure/AWS, then into frontend React, then back to backend, and now into engineering leadership.
All through that, I’ve tried to find similar communities. I don’t want to disparage those communities, so instead I want to shout out a few reasons I think the Apple dev community is uniquely great.
- No one is really there by accident
iOS development — and even more so tvOS, visionOS, etc — tends to be something you choose. You’re less likely to stumble into it because you already knew Java, or because you came from frontend or backend web.
People, generally speaking, have a passion for it. They’ve chosen it. That creates a base level of interest that is hard to fake.
- We’re all Apple fans
Yes, we know we’re a bit nuts at times, ignoring the high prices and vendor lock-in.
But a shared interest in doing things the One True Apple Way — as the HIG tells us — aligns a lot of conversations.
There’s less time spent arguing about first principles, and more time spent building on shared taste. That shared context is rare.
- The scope is narrow
The lack of scope is part of what turned me away from iOS back in 2018. I found variety and choice in the backend space.
But that narrowness is also a trade-off.
Go to backend dev gatherings and try finding people with the exact same stack as you. It’s basically impossible.
In the Apple dev world, there’s still a strong centre of gravity around Apple-vendored frameworks, tools, devices, and platform conventions. Even if you watch a talk on an area of Apple development you don’t do, you can still understand it because of how ruthlessly consistent it is with everything else.
I miss it.
Not enough to go back to it, or to go back to being an IC. But I do want to contribute.
I regularly speak at DevWorld and CocoaHeads Sydney with content that is either generic to all types of programming or mobile-development adjacent. And while I’m slowly losing touch, a joke about clearing DerivedData still gets a reliable laugh.
So I wanted to make something small that serves that exact feeling: seeing what everyone in the room has built.
I have a new gift for the Apple dev community:
A new, free service for meetups and conferences, inspired by those WWDC-style icon walls where you suddenly realise just how much everyone in the room has shipped.
You can use it to put every attendee’s app on the big screen. Create an event, collect App Store apps by QR code, moderate them, then run a dense animated icon wall.
It’s free, lightweight, and built for community events. Not a marketing funnel. Just for fun.
With love, Sam