Teaching a whole engineering team to ship native iOS
A team of web and backend developers, a native iOS product to ship, and no in-house Swift, very early in Swift’s life. I trained the whole team, then re-architected a content library that survived every device Apple has released since.
The problem
Homer was an early-learning product for children, with a large library of interactive content and a real iOS audience. The engineering team were good, but they were web and backend developers working across several languages, with no in-house Swift capability and a native iOS product that needed to ship.
This was very early in Swift’s life. There were no established courses, few books worth reading, and no accumulated body of practice to lean on. The usual answer, hire people who already know it, barely existed as an option yet.
Separately, the content library had a structural problem. Layouts were hard-coded to specific screen sizes. Every new iPhone or iPad meant revisiting the whole catalogue.
What I did
- Trained the entire engineering team on Swift from scratch, taking developers with no prior Apple-platform experience to the point of shipping and maintaining production code.
- Re-architected the content library away from layouts pinned to specific screen dimensions and into a dynamic system that adapted to whatever device it found itself on.
- Led the team through the company’s acquisition, including the technical diligence and continuity that goes with it.
The outcome
Homer had an engineering team that could ship and maintain native iOS where none had existed, and a content system that absorbed every subsequent generation of iPhone and iPad without a rewrite.
We continue to be over the moon about Charlie. I wish we could clone him. Britt Meyers, founder, Learn With Homer
This is the engagement I point to when someone asks whether I can lead a mobile function rather than just work inside one.