Scott Berrevoets - til

Objective-C enums can be string-backed... sort of

Scott Berrevoets — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

While looking at AVAudioSessionErrorCode in Xcode, I noticed something interesting in its definition:

typedef CF_ENUM(AVAudioInteger, AVAudioSessionErrorCode) {
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeNone = 0,
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeMediaServicesFailed = 'msrv',   // 0x6D737276, 1836282486
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeIsBusy = '!act',                // 0x21616374, 560030580
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeIncompatibleCategory = '!cat',  // 0x21636174, 560161140
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeCannotInterruptOthers = '!int', // 0x21696E74, 560557684
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeMissingEntitlement = 'ent?',    // 0x656E743F, 1701737535
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeSiriIsRecording = 'siri',       // 0x73697269, 1936290409
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeCannotStartPlaying = '!pla',    // 0x21706C61, 561015905
    AVAudioSessionErrorCodeCannotStartRecording = '!rec',  // 0x21726563 …

`Optional` has a `take()` function

Scott Berrevoets — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

After the introduction of Optional.toggle() back in 2018, I thought I had learned everything there is to Optional, but today I learned about another method: Optional.take(). As the [documentation] points out, it returns the value of a mutable optional (if not nil) and then resets the variable to …

Claude can load files "lazily" or "greedily"

Scott Berrevoets — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Typically, markdown files can referenced other files by linking to them: [My File](myfile.md). Claude understands this syntax, making it a nicely portable way to reference files. When prompting in Claude Code, referencing other files works through the @-syntax: @path/to/file. This loads the file into Claude's context …

macOS can remember SSH passphrases

Scott Berrevoets — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0800

Having to type out my password every time in SSH into a machine got a little tedious for me. Turns out macOS can save these passphrases to the Keychain to save some typing each time you try to connect to a host over SSH.

To enable this, make sure you're …

git can tell you ignored files, and why

Scott Berrevoets — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

Today I created a new file at ./Resources/Environment.xcconfig, but git didn't pick up on the file and didn't show it in git status. I suspected the file was gitignored, but nothing in my .gitignore was obviously excluding this file. git status --ignored adds a section in to the …

There is a term for words like i18n and a11y

Scott Berrevoets — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800

They're called numeronyms and they're common terms in tech to refer to long words like "internationalization" (i18n) and accessibility (a11y). However, they're also used outside of tech: K9, 24/7, and gr8 are all numeronyms as well.

The official definition, according to Wikipedia:

A numeronym is a word, usually an …