Marin Todorov, independent iOS developer, book author, trainer, and speaker

Meet Marin, if you visit a conference or two, there is a good chance you have met Marin in person.Marin joins me on my podcast and we discus his work as a software developer.

An interesting bit is his work on DocC. Yes, that’s the new documentation tool in shipped with Xcode.

He also recently published his latest book Modern Concurrency in Swift.There is tons more things Marin has done over the years. But fortunately he list all his work on his personal website: https://underplot.com/

Marin's book Modern Concurrency in Swift http://swiftconcurrencybook.com/

You can also find Marin on Twitter

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:46

So Hi, and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I'm sitting here with Martin total off, you might know him from Ray Wonderlic, or his work that is done at realm. Or maybe you've run into him at one of the many conferences and other talks that he has given over the years. Now, first of all, Martin, welcome to my podcast. How are you doing this evening?

Marin Todorov: 1:07

Thank you very much. I'm doing fine. As we're talking pre recording, we had probably putting glue on to sleep but I think things are have calmed down now. So that's good.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:19

Cool. And most people within the iOS community, if they've been around in that community for a few years, they know you, most likely from your work at Ray Wonderlic. Because you've been with them for almost 10 years for over 10 years already. Right.

Marin Todorov: 1:33

All right. I think it was in 2011. When we worked together on the first book, I was five by tutorials. Now is 2022. So that's probably over 10 years, right? Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:45

That's a long time already. But what are you doing nowadays? What's your current role? What is your day to day when you're working?

Marin Todorov: 1:54

Right? So my, my last big project, so to say that I worked on, I did contract for a while for for developer Publications at Apple. So what I worked on last Fuli was we released the documentation compiler, and Xcode and in the Swift swift tool chain last summer. And since then, I'm been on a, I don't know how they call it hiatus, or so I haven't really done much except for working on a book on the new Swift concurrency, which came out in autumn. So I think since autumn, I've been really taking a break, and just experimenting with things. People who follow me on Twitter have seen, like, a bunch of weird prototypes that I've been putting out just to see how, what people think.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:50

So and your book, you mentioned, you released it last autumn? So that's like, a couple months ago. Yeah. How is it doing for you right now? Is it? Is it what you expected? Or is it better or worse? How's it going?

Marin Todorov: 3:03

I think that I think that the reaction has been probably better than than I expected. Because I mean, when so when we started working on this, with with the editors, and in basically the, you know, books, at very early I produced by a large number of people, like I'm the single author, but like, there's a few more people who just do editing, there's other people who do design and so forth and so forth managers. But, I mean, when we started on this, the idea was that it's going to be a niche book that will only please sort of say, you know, people that are that are early adopters. And they're doing experiments and so far because a dub dub was announced that async await and the whole concurrency thing is going to be supported only iOS 15 and Mac OS 12. So it was kind of like a niche experiment book ended, like midway through through working on this. The backporting was announced, and then finished just before we released the book, so so the pressure increased significantly. And actually, the the, the reaction from the community was, was much, much bigger than than we expected at the start, because now the book is much more relevant. In general, but people have been very positive. And we didn't have so much time to put it together. So there's been a lot of feedback in the forums, we've been fixing typos, we've been fixing a couple of code issues and things like that. So I think that's great. So far, I'm really happy.

Jeroen Leenarts: 4:44

So and how many books do you have your name on by now?

Marin Todorov: 4:53

That's I didn't prepare for this question. I can check on my website. But uh, I think it's probably 10 to 12. Probably around 12. I worked publishing with Ray for a long while, but before that I worked on other books as well. So I think probably around 12 Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:15

So having done more than a dozen books, by the sounds of things, it does seem to indicate that you get quite a lot of enjoyment out of writing a book. Is that true?

Marin Todorov: 5:28

It's true. It's true. But, you know, to be honest, I think it's mostly the process that raise company has established for working with technical authors that I really enjoy. You know, I know, I know. technical people People are tempted by the idea of publishing a book. But most don't realize, like all the gargantuan work that goes into things like marketing design, pre preprint, and so forth, and so forth. So, what Ray has done is to have authors jump in, contribute the content and the code, and have like a whole pipeline that just gets everything in, like beautifies it edited, it's it, you know, there's a whole machinery of work that allows you to just focus quickly on what you're good at. And then like, feed it into the rest of the, of the machinery. And this is great. So, you know, I like to jump in for a few weeks or a couple of months and just author the content and just be done with it basically,

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:38

does that also, because the content that you write is, of course, a copy, edited and checked and taken to the process? It does that sometimes Ngop the chapter of content that you then if you look at what you've wrote initially, and how it ends up, and that you look at it, wow, I did I write this? I don't even recognize anymore, but it's good.

Marin Todorov: 7:00

I mean, I recognize the content, for sure. But you have a really good point in there, like after, specifically a race company, there's three editors that go over your content, one after another. And so sometimes the content will be so good at the end that I would say, Hmm, this, this is really good. Or this has become really good. On the way. That's sure. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:29

Okay, so and the book, who should read that book that you wrote on async await?

Marin Todorov: 7:35

Right. So the new, the new Swift concurrency that was introduced with Swift 5.5. Is, is. So it's not a framework, like combine or RX Swift, that is, that is like a higher level, architecture kind of thing, it's a lower level, and it's, and it's here to replace Grand Central Dispatch, you know, along the way, probably, you know, within a, within a year or two, it will be very reasonable to, like, never use Grand Central Dispatch, again. And so I think that people who not only advanced, but also beginners would need to know how to use, you know, async API's as, as, you know, Apple's API's, and, you know, every major third party framework will slowly migrate to sink away. I think this is a skill that, you know, everyone should aim to have some understanding of within the next year or two. And so I think it's very relevant. skill to work on. And I mean, maybe for maybe for beginners, or maybe for only for people who who aim to consume the sync API is probably it's enough to just watch the the dub dub DC sessions, and, you know, read some blogs and so forth. It's great to read a book, but I think people who are designing SDKs, or working on frameworks or working on logic projects, they should definitely have a little better understanding for sure.

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:13

Okay. Well, that's done the book that you wrote on this topic with the help of the ray Wonderlic. Team. So how many people rough estimates? Do you estimate have have worked on the book

Marin Todorov: 9:28

on a book? Well, a team is, you know, I'm the author. So that's one. They were four more editors that worked on the book. So these usually include the technical editor who revises whether the code is using the latest and greatest API's, or if maybe there is a some optimization that can be done in some of the sample codes, and so forth. So there's a technical person after you that because, you know, like, along the way, you, you try things, you write things, sometimes you need to, you know, make some weird steps along the way through the chapter to just lead people through like, faulty situations so that they see, you know, what's the benefit at the end, and so forth. And then sometimes you get lost along the way, like, sometimes you forget, like a couple of lines in there that don't make sense anymore. After working on a chapter for a while, and so forth, so you know, there's a technical person that goes over you, or after you and they make sure that you didn't forget anything wrong in there. Or maybe you didn't use the name of a variable somewhere where you didn't think it's it's important that he still used like an AI or chains and so forth, for for loop counter and so forth. So these are five with the editors. There's usually a manager that oversees the book, the book project as a whole, that six, there were at least a couple of art team people working with us. There was like marketing as well involved, at least a couple of people as well. So you know, it's it's a fluid. It's a fluid team, where, you know, I know how in larger companies, there are teams that are there that have their own projects, like by domain, so to say, marketing, art, and so forth. So it will be like these. They had a name at Google, I think, for these kinds of themes that are formed for projects that pull people from different teams for for a given time. And then like, they disperse it,

Jeroen Leenarts: 11:42

yeah, this person. Yeah.

Marin Todorov: 11:45

So so it works similarly.

Jeroen Leenarts: 11:49

Okay, this way. So that's, that's really, in number of people. That's quite a few faces that that have been involved with the book. And it goes to show that writing a book is not just writing the content, it's, it's a whole lot of work besides that, as well, because I was told by another book author at some point that's doing a book and doing in a broader sense, it's like 20% of the time you're writing. And the other 80% is pretty much just getting the word out and making sure that what you write is good, and that you do the marketing on everything, so that you actually are able to sell what you wrote down on paper. So that was very interesting and eye opening when when he told me that. So just to switch gears a little bit. How long have you been doing something in relation to software development by now?

Marin Todorov: 12:43

Oh, yeah, I did start in 92. So that's 30 years that I've been that I've been doing this. And this just today, I was sharing with somebody on Twitter that most of the technology that I've used so far, is long gone, and forgotten, and forgotten. So and I think that the, that my most valuable skill is to be able to quickly find things that I that I need, right now, instead of just kind of like memorizing them up front, and then having them memorized or so it makes no sense, have used so many languages, it makes no sense to know exactly 100% of the syntax and so forth.

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:26

So And what made you initially interested in software development at the start, right.

Marin Todorov: 13:37

That's a wonderful question. I so I always have been interested in two things. And, by always, I mean, even, like, when I was a little kid, I was born interested in art and technology. And, and so for for a long while I did vote. And so it's a very little kid, I, you know, played with engineering, toys and stuff like that, and doing like, electrical circuits and things like this. And at the same time, was training, painting a lot, and so forth, and so forth. So, I did both. And I did edit art in school. So I was at an art class in school. But it did feel a little bit. Prospects weren't so good. I think I'm coming from a developing country where being an artist is not very well, that doesn't didn't have a lot of prospects. So practicality, kind of like pushed me a little bit towards technology. And then, yeah, and then I switched from the art school into a mathematical slash engineering kind of school. So that kind of like helped along the way.

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:10

Yeah, because back in those days, because you started in 92. You mentioned Yeah, it was quite often still that that something related to software development was still attached to the maths department within a university right? Yeah.

Marin Todorov: 15:25

Yeah. It was it also additionally. Hilariously, I mean, looking looking like today looking back, it's really amusing that back in the day like, like we were printing Like geeks that are, you know, this waste of time. So, you know, being in high school was very, I think it was, it was difficult being being like into computers because nobody knew what they are and what they're good for. And it was just nobody understood it. And it was basically, you know, frowned upon even

Jeroen Leenarts: 16:08

if you were sitting still in front of a box that you had projected light and pressing buttons all the time, and to the observer, you would just literally doing nothing. And but actually, you were doing a whole lot of things at the time, but it was all in your head. And that's, that's something that nowadays people seem to seem to get a little bit more. So but you are originally from from Bulgaria, correct? Yes. And what was the what was it? Like in in 92? In Bulgaria? Because was it already? Or was that because it of course, the iron curtain has already fallen? But things were changing rapidly back in those years, right.

Marin Todorov: 16:52

Oh, just yeah, it has just fallen in 1989. And so yeah, it was, I mean, democracy was still pretty young, very fragile, a lot of, you know, pathfinding, where, where things are going how they got to be. So, you know, some of some of these times were not so great. We didn't have, I think 9697 We had hyperinflation, you know, like, people are freaking out here. So I'm currently living in Germany. And so people are freaking out, like, oh, 4% of inflation for this year, from we're gonna die, and so forth and so on. And like, yeah, you've you've seen literally nothing recently. Yes. So yeah, so so things like that. And, but we kind of like we kind of, like, managed through. And I think right now, it's been speaking of the country, I think were going in, and like in the, in the, in the right direction. There's a lot of improvement. And, you know, sometimes when I fly back, I can barely recognize, you know, like, the, like, the way from the airport, into the city centre, and so on. It's just brutal, like, huge office building, like big companies are in there. And, you know, people are just like strolling from the subway station into their fancy offices and so forth. So, yeah, it's

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:23

it's, you think this looks like the rest of Europe? Really?

Marin Todorov: 18:27

Yeah. It's barely recognizable when I compare it back to the days when I was, you know, starting my first companies back there.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:34

Yeah. So and that's also something that you mentioned, right there starting companies? Because that's something you've done at a reasonable frequency as well, right?

Marin Todorov: 18:44

Yeah. I did launch of a couple, at least back in the day. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:49

And was it like, starting a new company? Because the previous one didn't work out? Or were you like, moving on from a successful company and starting something new? Or what was the process there? Because you don't hear people often say, Yeah, I enjoyed starting companies.

Marin Todorov: 19:07

Right. Really think thing I know people who enjoy starting

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:11

companies. Yeah. But that those are quite few, I think comparatively, of course, because if you're in those circles, then it's, quote unquote, normal, of course.

Marin Todorov: 19:22

Well, yeah, what so when I saw when I started, like my first couple of jobs, like full time jobs, I think it was still pretty early days. So that start working in 1999. And so like we're working in web development was also like quite new and very unestablished is a professional.

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:44

Yeah, you're saying some names, their web development and 99. It's like, there was like, crazy town back then.

Marin Todorov: 19:51

Yeah, yeah. So my first job I started with front page and Microsoft front page that used to be a software for visual, visual creation of websites.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:03

That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah.

Marin Todorov: 20:05

It did have an amazing feature of importing a Word document and turning into a web page. And things like this. So yeah. So to start with front page 97 And Dreamweaver two, and there was in between, we used a Photoshop five at a time. So yeah, it was long time ago.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:29

Yeah. Slicing slicing tables. Exactly. All day long. Exactly.

Marin Todorov: 20:34

And so and so yeah. And so I did work in a couple of small companies. More like an intern ships kind of thing like you And I didn't really like it. So. So I think after my second one, I met some, some some people and we said, Okay, let's start working together. And we will aim to only do the best stuff. There are. And this was like the whole plan, just rent the place, bring in some computers, and like, start doing the best things. There are. Yeah. And so this was my first, this was the first company, we worked for a long time, I think, what, six, seven years probably together, and they're still present on the market back there. Okay. And then another one, I started with some partners from Belgium. And so we did like a similar similar approach. But like for international markets.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:43

Okay. So that's, that's all based on hiring efforts, or sorry, or I should say that, that basically contract based work, right. So projects and and are hiring yourself out on an hourly basis?

Marin Todorov: 22:03

No, so no, so these were, so these were like, two proper, like web agencies. I think he will call them to stay. So we, so we did, like projects on on budget. And we would have, so we would have like longer term clients and so forth. So we had our own technology, of course, developing house that allow us to rapidly build projects and so forth and so forth. Yeah, that was that was good times. We did very interesting things. For example, in Bulgaria, we did, we worked with, we did with, we work with big brother for a long time. We worked with Wants to Be a Millionaire. So we did. We did a lot of interesting things for TV. Apparently, they, there was no other agency available at a time that would do in a very hl. Well, TV. Multimedia, you know, like when you're like when you go like when you're watching a TV show, you know, like, there's something happening on screen. But there's also a little curl on your TV, like all the questions that appear or progress bars like money, money, letters, whatever, blah, blah, blah. So

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:23

creating viewer participation, right, right. Yeah. So what I nowadays called the omni channel approach, because that's something that had to be invented by broadcast media back in the day, right. So remember, big big product was also a show in the Netherlands. And it was one of the first shows in the Netherlands and I think big product started in the Netherlands. And it was one of the first shows that allows viewers to vote on which participants was allowed to stay or which one had to go. I don't know the exact details. But actually, the first time that I did that, or actually the first few times that it did that they actually crashed the entire salary network back then in a day in the Netherlands, whereas there was just too many people simultaneously sending an SMS message. That just that just crashed the infrastructure back then. So yeah, that was a bit of a thing there. And yeah, that that's really like, at the start of things that we really take for granted nowadays. But at what point did that Apple technology and iOS come into the picture for you then? Because were you already doing Mac related stuff. When the all important keynote with Steve Jobs was given in I think it was in San Francisco? Or what Where were you diving into Apple technologies at a later stage?

Marin Todorov: 24:50

Right. So So, so I did web development for for a long time, I think until about 2010. And no, actually, I did have a Mac and home since about the early 2007. And I tried to do some software for the Mac. But it was kind of at the time. They were Ruby bindings and Python bindings, so that you could build cocoa apps with with the script language as the backhand and cocoa as the front end.

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:33

But that was even it was even a Java virtual machine right that that that allowed you to create Mac apps or even

Marin Todorov: 25:40

but all of this part we all know like nonsense and was canceled, so I didn't really, I didn't really do a lot. I do remember that. I think 2008 No, probably, it was just before the iPhone could have been even a few months before the iPhone, I can't really pinpoint a date. But there was like, there wasn't the whole app, like there was a whole technical Apple team over in Prague, where I lived at the time. So I was in the Czech Republic for few years, and there was like a whole team there. And, you know, there was probably 25 people in the room, and it was probably two thirds empty, because there was just, there was just no interest and whatever apples it was there in person to present. And they were like, mostly talking about Objective C 2.04. Could have been this. Regardless, it was it was an event object to see. And there was just no interest. There was just, it was it was very, it was dead, there was there was a and after the iPhone came out, I was interested, but I was still kind of unsure. Because I was unsuccessful previously with creating software for the Mac, and satisfying job around 2009. In I felt that I'm that I'm done with web development, because I've been doing it for a really long time, it was over 1012 years time. So I was really looking forward something new and and a couple of friends asked me to maybe do together some iPhone apps. So I was like, Okay, let's give it a try. I tried before, but I'm not so sure about Objective C, I'm just not so sure. They're like, No, we won't cost you anything. We're gonna buy like a test device, you can play with it, and so forth. And you know, and then it worked out. Yeah, just like that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:48

So and then you pretty much made the switch to being an iOS developer. And then what happened, because I reckon you started either creating your own products or creating products for other people. Because in the start of the App Store, you could just pretty much throw everything at the App Store. And you would be making money if you did somewhat of a reasonably reasonable job. But what was the what was the game plan for you back then?

Marin Todorov: 28:16

Right. So that sort of game plan was to, you know, similarly to what I've done before, you know, start start making, start making apps and just do the best ideas we get. So, so it was three of us working together. And we had like a really long list of ideas that we could do. And we did, I think we did two, very small, just just just try out apps, with some pictures in it in them and things like this, just very simple. And when I was four came out, we had we had a third app, go into the app store called Doodle booth. And doodle was in the photos category. And photos category was completely there was nothing in there at the time. Because there was no Instagram, there was no tic TOCs, there was nothing there, there was just a some some some some, some apps with with wallpapers, photo galleries, things like this, there was not much happening at all. And so doodle was. It's interesting, because on this day, we released two apps at the same time, one was a game about learning Japanese and one was a little boat, which is an app where you take a photo of yourself or maybe a little drawing from Facebook, and so forth. And you can add doodles, pre pre drawn doodles on top of it, like frames, and you know, just Beautify. But But it had like a certain style. And it was really easy to make. You know, the idea was to make your photos look like you just doodle on a magazine over some photos and add a mustache or add a funny hat with a pan and things like that. So it kind of like worked, it worked good. And it was fully featured with with in app purchases. And that's quite fancy at a time. And so we had no idea which one is going to do better or maybe both of them don't don't, you know, don't have any downloads and so forth. So, but um, surprisingly little bit was turned out pretty, pretty good. I think. Over the course of the year we had about a million downloads and a lot of in app purchases as well. So that that worked out pretty well for us. And it gave us a lot of momentum to not only continue with doodle, but also work on other other apps as well. And yeah, it was it was, I think it was pretty interesting. Because we also had like sharing on Twitter, straight from the app and think it was. So it was really funny to see like completely random people all over the world, just share what they did with the app, and so forth. So we had some interestingly, we had, I think, some some Korean KPop stars, use the app on Twitter, just completely out of the blue for us. And you know, it, it did well, and so it like it, it really made me realize that this is something that I'm good at, and I really want to do more of it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:38

So then that's, that's your initial products on the on the iOS App Store. iOS four, is the is the version that that we're talking about. But at what point did you get involved with with Ray when Lex and because you, you mentioned 10 years ago, and I think the iOS tree I was for that's a little bit over 10 years ago. So did they approach you? Or did you? Did you approach them? Or what was the process there? Because for some reason, you must have been an interesting person for them to get on board on their team in some capacity.

Marin Todorov: 32:15

Right? So so first of all, like, I think 10 years ago, there was there was no team, it was just ray in his in his basement, actually, I'm sorry, in his in his mother in law's basement, and just just writing a blog. So he was he was working on his own apps, and he was writing on his blog. And so around 2009 and 10, there were just a bunch of different iOS developers on Twitter that we got to talk fairly often, I think. And so Ray had a blog, I had a blog, you know, a few of few of these other I was developers also had blogs. And, and so and raise raise idea was, hey, we all have a blog. But what would it be if we can like, joint efforts, and you know, like, wrote together, so that we can, you know, have much more reach than just all of us separately, writing whatever we can think about, basically. And so at first, he had an idea of like, guest posts on his own blog, but then afterwards, it really made sense to, with his blog, like, steadily gaining, gaining popularity, it made sense to, like, kind of, like form a team and start like doing your roster with like, with, like, topics to write about, and so forth. And so, and he's been doing like the same thing for for over 10 years, right, like, so. He's been slowly and steadily like, expanding the team by maybe a person or so for a while. And always like, having more and more views and coming up with more and more ideas. And it just worked out. He he put a lot of effort, he and his wife into this and so and so, it, I think at the time, I think in 2010, I saw the movie, yes, men with Jim Carrey, where he I don't remember details, but for a while, but just saying yes to everything that people asked him to do. And so like, I had the same idea in 2010 11. And I said, I think I want to I want to more things happening in my life. So I'm just gonna say yes to like, everything. And so this was one of the things. Ray said, Hey, why don't we all get together and write a book about I was fine.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:44

Yes. I was like, Yes, of course. Yeah.

Marin Todorov: 34:47

Why not? Go for it. And at the time reading ebooks was just not a thing at all. So yeah. Right. And then the same thing, like it was three months before that, I think, when somebody wrote me on, I think on LinkedIn, and they said, Hey, we're, we're, we have just created a website called, we called it Udemy. And we're looking for people to come and do video courses in here. And like, video courses on the internet, I was gonna watch this, but like, I was like, okay, yes. And so I was one of the first video instructors on Udemy as well. And and so like a bunch of things happened like this over the course of a year and I that sounded like really out there, but I kind of like did them in the in the I think the record that afterwards, things were rolling pretty fast.

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:38

So you could say that that that that's that was like around 2005 time there was like this big flurry of things happening in your professional life video books, blog writing, probably some projects or products that you worked on. But are you still actively creating video content nowadays?

Marin Todorov: 35:59

No, I must say to them that I'm not. I'm, I'm, we've had our daughter thing five years now, I think soon is going to be five. And I must say that since since the baby came, it's been really difficult to juggle so many different roles, you know? Yeah. Before, that was easy. I had all the time in the world and all the energy in the world. And I had all the sleep in the world. So, you know, it was, was fairly easy to do a lot of things and switch focus pretty quickly, and so forth. But yeah, I think since we had to, like rearrange our lives around her. I'm more looking into probably focusing on on programming development. Having the fewest possible projects to manage at the same time, basically, to simplify a lot.

Jeroen Leenarts: 36:52

Yeah, yeah, to make sure that the time that you have available that that you get, like, the maximum effects out of that within reason, of course,

Marin Todorov: 37:00

yeah, of course. I mean, if you're not, you know it well, like if you don't have your sleeve, then

Jeroen Leenarts: 37:07

everything breaks down. You can keep that that for like, maybe a week, but then you start feeling even earlier already. And but so 2005, and we're now in 2022. So could you just say that in those years between then and now you did some video, you did a lot of conference talks you did. I think you also did some some training, here and there as well. So workshops, or maybe even more, more substantial courses. Good to say that, that you just have this tendency that you like doing specific things, but you just need to change things up every now and then.

Marin Todorov: 37:49

I don't think that I would say this, per se. I mean, I think I think what I'm, I think what I what I found out that it's really keeping me motivated. Doing things is where I see the value for others as the outcome. And so since since I'm mostly talking to other developers and technical people, so when I see that the project has brings value to other developers and other tech people that I can relate to, that really keeps me motivated. So you know, for example, the Swift Doxie project that I just mentioned previously. And Apple was, was really one like such example. Whereas where I saw that this is going to bring a lot of value for developers that are that are working on, on on libraries and frameworks on and so forth to, you know, make their project discoverable, and bring even more value to their, to their developers. And so this is something that really motivated me. And so, in conference talks are also driven by this desire to just just help out other other people that I repeat to

Jeroen Leenarts: 39:03

my but how did you get involved with the Doxy effort? Because it was there was already some sort of Doc comments parsing generating available within Xcode, but then Apple created Doxy. But how did you get involved with that effort? And,

Marin Todorov: 39:21

right, so So I didn't mentioned before I did contract for Apple, so an employee, but you know, for some things, they just bring in people to, you know, to execute and projects, and I just spoke to people on Twitter one day randomly. I heard about that they're looking for somebody to work on this. Not this project specifically, but just to work on in that department, and help out. So I did reach out to to, to the manager, and we agreed and just didn't did a contract on that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 39:57

Okay. And Doc, see, that's, that's still what language it is written in.

Marin Todorov: 40:03

Docs is written in Swift, actually, a little after the announcement a few months after the announcement, it was open source. So that's actually available at Apple's GitHub. Net. So if you go to github.com/apple, slashed Swift, dash Doxie. We did that we'll see at the end, that there's all the code.

Jeroen Leenarts: 40:26

And what's it like to just work on this project? Because obviously, when you're working on it, there's not much you can can share about it. But then at some point, Apple announced it and open sourced it and then you're at the position that you could say, Yeah, I actually worked on that.

Marin Todorov: 40:44

Right I mean, it's, I mean, it's great. As I said, I was just contractor on this. So they weren't even like, they were not obliged to like, give me credit, but they are, they're still like, I think they did very, they, they, it was just very nice of them to, I know, put me into the initial credits that went into the authoring team of the of the initial version, so to say that went on GitHub and so forth. So they gave me that credit, and, of course, Much obliged. For them doing this. Yeah. But yeah, it's great, it's great. Especially when, when a larger project like this, that you put a lot of effort into, makes it to the, to the to the, into the wild. That's really, I mean, it's exciting.

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:45

So but just to wrap things up a little bit, because we're approaching our end time. What are some of the highlights? Over all those years that we haven't touched upon yet?

Marin Todorov: 42:01

didn't touch upon,

Jeroen Leenarts: 42:02

things that get the stuff that you're proud of, are really crazy stuff that that has happened?

Marin Todorov: 42:11

You know? I think I did, I think I did a whole bunch of things. But to be honest, I think I was just there very early, like, as we said, like, when I when I started doing this, like nobody thought that this is any viable, like career or anything like that. Nobody thought that there's going to be a career in programming or development or it and so forth. So, so I didn't have because what I'm trying to say is, now if I go on on a on a computer related slack or on Twitter, I see, like people that are that are just in school right now, or just coming out of school, they have a lot of pressure, because like their whole life is laid out in front of them, they have to, like if they they've invested into like an expensive degree, they need to start working at one of the higher caliber companies, they need to start with an internship, they need to go into a junior and senior and senior to and whatever. And then, like all of this pressures, like just putting them into some kind of like, rail tracks didn't need to be running on. Because otherwise, they kind of repaid all the data and everything is kind of like, I feel it seems like a lot of pressure, while me not having any, like viable career in software engineer. At the time, like it allowed me to just do random things and see what works out. And so this was, I feel like it was probably much more fun. In inside, like now that I feel that it kind of worked out. I'm pretty happy with it. But uh, but I threw away a perfectly good opportunity to get a degree in statistics in order to like, drop out and start working full time as a software developer. So it was a pretty risky.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:19

I think it suffices to say that, while the Iron Curtain fell at an opportune time for you, you came of age at like, basically the right point in time, you had like, a lot of experience doing web development and got a bit fed up with that right at the right time again, because then Apple released this small device that was like, what was it again, it's internet communicator, it's a phone, and it was something else and

Marin Todorov: 44:50

in a touchscreen.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:53

So it's an iPhone. And then you decided to just, yeah, maybe I should get into that. And that worked out for for over a decade already. So what are still some of the things that you that you look forward to, to do? After you've, you've had your time off after the Doxy projects?

Marin Todorov: 45:12

Right? I Yeah. I think I'm blessed because I feel that I that I have a clear idea what I want to do still. So this is great. And so I think in the last five years, I've really have really narrowed down what really excites me into building developer tools. So what I touched on before, I really get excited about providing value for other developers and so I've been trying out too, you know, I've been putting different prototypes, right. I'm learning a lot of things about potentially like ways to empower other developers. And I'd be talking to a few companies as well to do something along along these lines. So it could be that sometime soon, I also will start on something new, as well, but But right now, I'm still, I still need a little bit of a break.

Jeroen Leenarts: 46:16

Yeah. Yeah. And then and then the next idea. Yeah.

Marin Todorov: 46:20

But it's going to be kind of like in this in this like direction? For sure.

Jeroen Leenarts: 46:25

Okay. If people are interested in following you a little bit online, what is the best way for them to do that? Probably on Twitter, I think,

Marin Todorov: 46:35

Oh, yeah. First of all, I think of all the information is on my website, it's not their plots.com on their plot, like the word. And there you have all the, like the Twitter handle GitHub, LinkedIn, whole information about books and so forth. That the Twitter handle is I can Zope, unfortunately, is not a word. So it's a little bit more difficult to find. But if you look for Marin total rough, on Twitter, I pop up I think, pretty high.

Jeroen Leenarts: 47:04

And I'll make sure to link up those two things from the show notes. thing, but people have an easy time finding you online. And and following you. Well, then, I'd say man, thanks for your time. I really enjoyed listening to your to your story. And I hope tomorrow night, your little one has a little bit of an easier time to sleep.

Marin Todorov: 47:29

Thank you. Yeah, sometimes it's just, you know, you love her. But sometimes you feel oh my god, it's too much. Just just one day.

Jeroen Leenarts: 47:38

Yeah, duh. And then they're grown up and they're going a little bit fast. Yeah. So I've heard. So I'm mad and hopefully we'll get to meet each other in person at a conference here in Europe. Sometime soon. Maybe this year? I don't know. Who knows. I'm going to Swift heroes if I'm allowed to. So that's, that's somewhat closer to you to where you are in Berlin. And maybe I hope next year that they will do UI kit again, maybe? And then that's like right at your doorstep even you Why can't you Why can't sorry. You I can't edit this. So um, thanks for your time and and enjoy the rest of the evening.

Marin Todorov: 48:23

Awesome. Yeah, that was great, though. I really enjoyed talking through all of this. Remember things that I haven't really thought about a long time. That was that was really, really nice. Thank you so much.