I loved that tutorial! It got me started down this path.

This seems like a very negative (and wrong?) perspective. Why do you think you’ll earn the same in 5 years? Do you think you’ve learned everything you can about software and business? Companies aren’t hiring you just to complete a specific task that they have right now.

I’m going to blog about whatever I end up building. I hope some of you will join me :)

I recently made a toy type checker for Python and had a lot of fun.

https://austinhenley.com/blog/babytypechecker.html

What are some great technical blogs that I should consider following? Many of my favorites have quit.

If I’m willing to go through the hassle of buying something, then I’m willing to pay more than $1.

Agreed. If the application is actually useful -- even if only slightly -- I strongly suspect I wouldn't think anything of paying $5.

This is why I am building a better AI for my inbox.

I’m guessing even this still requires that I use XCode.

It probably doesn't, as you practically never need Xcode for simple apps. From my experience, currently, you need Xcode to compile storyboards (NIB/XIB files) and bundle Assets.car (macOS BOM files); and compile Xcode projects, btw. I may be missing another important feature used in a lot of apps but otherwise for the most part you can build an iOS app without Xcode (or even macOS).

The command line tools are still XCode, in a way.

I am not talking about XCode command line tools. I am talking about currently available open-source tools that can actually replace those command line tools. I don't think that would count as Xcode as those tools are available on systems Xcode can't run on.

Is that true? What about the command-line version?

The Command Line Tools doesn't include the iOS SDK; or a simulator; or any of the other tools required to get it deployed to actual device.

Brief discussions 4 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27024804) and 7 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18638290).

It says it right there:

"Note: The ByteBool, WordBool, and LongBool types exist to provide compatibility with other languages and operating system libraries."

Turns out that old versions of Visual C++ used their own typedef of bool as int: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4897844/is-sizeofbool-de...

There were risc platforms with int sized bool, usually where one byte math wasn't in the instruction set.

In C, sizeof(bool) is implementation specific. Typical values are sizeof(char) and sizeof(int).

In case you need a lot more than two boolean values some day.