Daniel Gauthier

By keeping things clean and decluttered, and by ensuring that everything you need is within arm’s reach, you give yourself the mental space to focus on the creative and skillful bits of the job and avoid dumb mistakes.

So then, what does make for a good “app idea” in 2020? As an indie app developer, how can you make sure you’re pursuing an idea that actually has a shot at gaining some traction in a crowded space?

The reality, of course, is that I have absolutely no idea how to build a successful indie app. I’ve never done it, and actually, if I'm being honest, it seems pretty hard.

I’ve been having fun messing around with custom controls recently, and I thought it’d be worthwhile to walk through how, with a bit of creativity, we can build a nicely animated — and dare I say, whimsical — button using nothing but views, layout constraints and some simple transformations.

It’s a brand new year. 2020! My, how time flies.

The general style is…unconventional, to say the least; anything that needs to be used in multiple places is basically just globally accessible; and really, most of the app is contained within two view controllers, which are 2500 and 3500 lines long, and one of which is named “ViewController”.