Kodsnack 598 - Tiny dopamine hit, with Jack Cheng

Fredrik talks to Jack Cheng - author and creator of the iPhone note capture app Bebop. Jack describes where Bebop came from and how he built it, and how and why Copilot and other AI tools became integral parts of the workflow.

Being aware of the maintenance cost of each decision, keeping things focused, avoiding building yourself into a bloated corner - sometimes even deciding certain things don’t belong in your app.

Coding on the side, needing to balance the time you have? Use it to your advantage!

Jack also talks about the other apps he uses for working with notes and writing, and how different apps feel right for different types of writing.

(Yes, Obsidian once again makes an appearance.)

Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS!

Comments, questions or tips? We a re @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at info@kodsnack.se if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Links

Jack Detroit Jack’s books See you in the cosmos The many masks of Andy Zhou The slow web • - Jack’s blog post

Copilot Captio • - the app Jack used which let you email a note to yourself

Obsidian Nvalt Fsnotes Zapier Bebop Jack’s post introducing Bebop Ruby on rails Typepad Swift Swiftui Objective-C MVC App intents Visual studio code Xcode Figma Cursor • is the editor with more builtin LLM features

Support us on Ko-fi! Morning pages Jack’s newsletter Ghost Highland 2 John August Cot Share extensions Testflight These days • - Jack’s first novel, financed through Kickstarter

Robin Sloan Robin’s text about how an app can be a home-cooked meal WWDC • - Apple’s yearly developer conference

The Humane AI pin Rabbit See you on the bookshelf • - Jack’s podcast about creating See you in the cosmos

Booksmitten jackcheng.com • Jack on Instagram • , Threads • , and Mastodon

Titles

• Addicted to the slot machine of social media

• Just spin up an Iphone app

• A specific thing I want to build

• Advanced auto complete

• Gold coins along the way

• Freeze all these features

• The maintenance cost of every decision

• The speed of capture

• Tiny dopamine hit

• Use it to your advantage

• Immediately useful

• You can’t not be cliché

• Today as the title