Debit & Credit 6.0: The First of Many Rewrites
It is not a secret that software development and IT in general are rapidly changing industries. New things are introduced every year and sometimes it is hard to predict what will “stick” and stay relevant for a long time.
There is a tricky balance between choosing the “old, boring and well-known” technologies that are proven and well-documented, and “new, hot and exciting” things.
Debit & Credit was released in 2014, the year when Swift (a programming language from Apple) was first released. Swift itself has changed a lot since then and SwiftUI (a user interface framework) was introduced later.
It is certainly time for Debit & Credit to take advantage of these new technologies but in a slow, cautious manner. My objective is to make sure that the app stays relevant for years to come while not sacrificing user experience.
This is harder than it might look. If you are on macOS Ventura and you used the new System Settings app, you will know exactly what I mean. This is a perfect example of when a number of sacrifices were made. And I don’t want to make this mistake.
Version 6.0: New Report Graphs
That’s why I am very proud to release new reports for Debit & Credit. If you are running iOS 16 or macOS Ventura, you will see new report graphs and new report tables.
“Hold on! The reports are the same. I don’t see any difference. What are you talking about?” — this is something many of my users might say now.
And they will be right. Except for a few small changes visually the reports are exactly the same. That was my goal from the beginning — the rewrite makes the internals better and should not affect user experience in any negative way. In the future, once all rewrites are completed, there will be new features added but now is not the time for that.
What is Next
The next logical step is to rewrite the reports engine, which is what generates report data.
Once reports are done, I will move to financial plans. They are built on top of reports and it makes total sense to rewrite them as well. I expect this step to take a long time due to the complexity of financial plans but I hope to succeed. I will keep you informed 😎
Thank you
I would like to thank my customers and especially subscribers who support the ongoing development of the app. Without their continuing support, rewrites like that would not be possible.
Thank you and I wish you happy holidays! 🎉
