Today I released my new iPhone app, Hackers, which I’ve been working on for the past few months.
Hackers is an iPhone app designed for reading Hacker News on the go. I took a content first approach to the design which has resulted in a minimalist style. It takes some getting used to, especially not having separators between table cells, but with distinctive headers I didn’t feel it was necessary.
Hackers focuses on the most common way of reading Hacker News on an iPhone, during travelling or while waiting in queues. You may not have time to read a whole article and all the comments, but you have enough to skim the top posts and their top comments.
Open source
I’ve released Hackers as an open source project on GitHub. Please fork it, play around, and install it on your iPhone for free if you have developer account.
If you prefer the convenience of having automatic updates, you can buy Hackers on the App Store for £1.49 ($1.99):
Hopefully people can learn from my mistakes and particular ways I’ve implemented features. At the least it’s an entry into the crazy world of AutoLayout with Storyboards.
Future work
I will be continually working on Hackers, there are several features I’d like for the next version as well as iPad support. If you’d like to suggest something, create a new issue on GitHub, get in touch via Twitter: @weiran, or implement it yourself and send me a pull request.
Hi, I'm Weiran Zhang. I work as a Senior Engineering Manager at Capital One. I have a passion for technology and building thriving software teams. This blog is where I write about things I find interesting. You can follow me on Mastodon.