James Thomson has been maintaining PCalc for over 20 years. How do you write code that survives two decades? Well, you don't but how do you make it less painful? Learn about the natural selection process leading PCalc to have the engine separated from the UI, and how it came handy many years later. Custom UI, accessibility, easter eggs, and the ultimate question of universe: is calculator app a good business? - this episode has something for everyone.

Links:

James Thomson @jamesthomson

PCalc

DragThing

An Illustrated History of Easter Eggs

Dice

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:34 History Of PCalc 

05:45 UI / Engine separation

12:22 Architecture

13:34 State machine

17:31 Cross-platform

19:19 In-depth state machine

22:54 Case for encapsulation of numeric types

25:44 Reverse engineering a calculator

27:48 UI theming

39:19 Representing numbers

43:12 Unit conversion engine

47:03 Work from home, year schedule

48:41 Importance of learning

53:02 Investing time

54:19 Art for PCalc

56:53 About screen

1:03:33 Dice app as a testbed

1:06:04 Testing and accessibility

1:14:13 Cross-platform

1:19:18 Business of selling a calculator app

1:26:42 iOS community 

1:33:41 Closing remarks