Handing off public extension

Firing off the first tweet for @PublicExtension on October 9th, 2015 was a rush. I was on the tail end of my batch at the Recurse Center, after having spent the previous quarter transitioning from an backend engineer to writing Swift every day. The goal was to regularly post extensions I’ve come up with, stumbled upon, or received from the community. In the span of a year, I collected 89 extensions, had countless conversations with the Core Team, and even represented the account at XOXO Festival.

However, I (accidentally) treated Public Extension like a “Forever Project.” Without an end in sight, the weight of “do I just keep running this account ad infinitum” caused missed days to turn into weeks, and weeks into a year of hibernation. My energy drifted elsewhere. Writing, building out Peloton’s iOS team, and crafting memories with friends on two wheels. Until a couple of weeks ago, I had almost forgotten about the project when Joe—commonly aliased as @mergesort—expressed interest in taking the baton.

I couldn’t imagine a better fit. Not only is Joe a great friend who is 1000% game to volley Swift puns, but he also has a track record of helping, advising, and guiding folks in the iOS community. A lunch, repository transfer, and a few iMessages later, Public Extension has a second wind. Joe and I have discussed some of his early plans for the account and I’m stoked. Please give him the same support and cheers y’all have kindly given me along the first leg of PE’s relay. Below are some notes about the transition and aspects that will remain the same:

• To prevent old commit permalinks from breaking, we transferred the repository to Joe’s GitHub account and I forked it. This means that all of the old tweets can safely be embedded.
• The account wouldn’t have been possible without submissions. Going forward, all extensions will continue to link back to the original author, if applicable and with permission.
• On the note of submissions, they will still be accepted 💙 Joe can provide more details on preferred ways to do so.