Xcoders

Xcoders Social May 7

Thu, 07 May 2026 11:25:16 -0800

There’s an Xcoders social tonight (no presentations this month) — at Bale Breaker in Ballard, 7-9 pm.

Note that people show up early sometimes, and, this time of year, they stay later too. And there’s always a food truck there.

We’ll talk about the usual things, of course, which are many and varied. 🐥

Xcoders Social with Special Guests April 30

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:26:20 -0800

This Thursday we have a special fifth-Thursday Xcoders social — at 7-9 pm at Bale Breaker in Ballard. Usual place and time, in other words.

But what’s unusual this week is our mystery special guests from out of town! They’re former regulars and you won’t want to miss seeing them. Or meeting them for the first time.

See ya there! 🐥🎩

Xcoders Social April 16 and April 30

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:40:05 -0800

We’ve got five Thursdays this month, which means two Xcoders socials! Thursday April 16 and Thursday April 30.

We’ll be at Bale Breaker x Yonder Cider in Ballard, outside by the fire things, under cover (in case of rain). Starts around 7 pm, if not a bit earlier, and goes till closing at 9 pm.

See you there!

Xcoders presentation Thursday on GitHub CI and Fastlane

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:30:24 -0800

We have a meeting this Thursday, April 2, where local expert Jared Sorge will talk about modern and flexible CI with GitHub Actions and Fastlane.

Our bet is that you’re going to learn something that will make your engineering life easier. 😀

Where
North Seattle College
9600 College Way N

Room LB 1106 in the library
(Or sometimes next door in 1105)

When
Thursday, April 2, 2026
6:30 pm — gather and mingle
7:00 pm — watch Jared’s talk and learn things

Afterwards we tend to go to the nearby Watershed Pub and Kitchen (which is all ages friendly).

Xcoders Social March 19

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:26:08 -0800

It’s tonight! We’ll be at the usual place and time — Bale Breaker in Ballard 7-9 pm. Note that some people tend to show up early, and you can be one of them. 👍

Topics can and will be anything, but it’s a pretty safe bet that using LLMs for coding will be discussed since that’s such a big thing right now.

We’ll almost certainly be outside by the fire things. It‘s covered, so we’ll be fine if there’s some rain.

And note that you can subscribe to our calendar (see the Calendar page for the link) so you know about these things before they appear on the blog. 🐥

Xcoders Talk by Jake Savin March 5: Big Claude Job

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:32:48 -0800

We’ve got two great presentations for our March 5 meeting — Laura Savino’s talk on learning out loud these days and Jake Savin on using Claude to rebuild UserLand Frontier as a modern app.

It’s a huge job and Jake’s made a ton of progress — and he’s learned a lot about how to use Claude to make these kinds of projects work. As we learn to use LLMs to do more and more ambitious things, we’ll be walking in Jake’s footsteps. Jake will provide a map of this new territory.

(Why UserLand Frontier? Why rebuild it? UserLand Frontier is Dave Winer’s app from the ’90s, and it was with that app that Dave invented and/or fleshed-out and popularized much of the open web that we take for granted today: blogs, RSS, podcasts, and web services, for starters. This is a historically important piece of software, and Jake is bringing it to the modern age. Back in the day, Jake worked at UserLand Software along with another Xcoder, Brent Simmons.)

You know how your favorite bands and comics will do small shows first before doing their arena tour? That’s what’s happening here. 💥

Details:

Where
North Seattle College
9600 College Way N

Room LB 1106 in the library

When
Thursday, March 5, 2026
6:30 pm — gather and mingle
7:00 pm — watch Jake’s and Laura’s talks

Afterwards we go to the nearby Watershed Pub and Kitchen (all ages friendly).

Xcoders Talk by Laura Savino March 5

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:20:31 -0800

We’ve got a great speaker for our March 5 presentation meeting — Laura Savino will present “Learn Out Loud”:

As devs today, we’re supposed to demonstrate immediate skills in tools whose configs change once a fortnight, while shipping cutting-edge features in long-standing apps (that may still have a legacy bug or two). Laura is a trained teacher and Photoshop engineer who brings humor and solidarity to today’s dev environment with concrete advice on the mechanics of real learning and change, including encouraging without proselytizing, being vulnerable about what you don’t know, and staying curious amidst existential dread.

We’ll gush: Laura’s talks are awesome. Well-delivered, thought-inspiring, and fun. We always learn things that make us better.

You should go to this one! Seriously. This is the one.

Where
North Seattle College
9600 College Way N

Room LB 1106 in the library

When
Thursday, March 5, 2026
6:30 pm — gather and mingle
7:00 pm — Laura talks

Afterwards we go to the nearby Watershed Pub and Kitchen (which is all ages friendly).

See you there! 🎩🎸

Xcoders Social Feb. 19

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 11:05:53 -0800

We’ll be at the usual place and time — Bale Breaker and Yonder Cider in Ballard, Thursday Feb. 19, 7 - 9 pm. Outside in the covered area with the fire things.

Weather’s not looking great, but, again, we have fire! (And it shouldn’t be raining.) So your only excuse for missing it is that you don’t like fire. And that would be a weird thing to not like! 🔥🎩

Swift and WASM Presentation Thursday Feb. 5

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:18:58 -0800

This Thursday we’ll have a presentation by Geoff Pado on Swift and WASM — a super hot topic!

When: Thursday, Feb. 5. Mingling starts at 6:30 pm; presentation starts at 7 pm

Where: North Seattle College
9600 College Way N, Seattle
Room LB 1105 in the library

Afterwards (optionally, of course) we go to the nearby Watershed Pub and Kitchen, which is open to all ages and is pretty cool.

Xcoders Social Jan. 15

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:47:44 -0800

This Thursday Jan. 15 is the first Xcoders social of the year!

We’ll meet at our usual haunt — Bale Breaker and Yonder Cider in Ballard at 7 pm. Doesn’t look like rain this Thursday, so we will almost certainly be outside. With some fire for warmth. And cover just in case it does rain a little bit.

Tip: if you go to our calendar page and subscribe, you’ll see that we’re getting back to talks soon: there are presentation meetings coming up on Feb. 5 and Mar. 5. 😀

Xcoders Social Dec. 18

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 09:59:20 -0800

The last Xcoders social of the year is tonight! Standard time and place: Bale Breaker in Ballard, 7-9 pm. We’ll be outside, as usual, in the section with the fire thingies. (Well, it’s possible we could be inside if the weather’s bad enough, but that’s extremely rare. We are in that time of year where it could happen, though.)

Reminder: there’s more info on our calendar page — including a calendar you can subscribe to, which will give you earlier notice of Xcoders plans. 😀

Xcoders Social Dec. 4

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:02:57 -0800

This would normally be a presentation week — but we’re doing a social meeting instead.

It’ll be at the regular place and time for social meetings: Bale Breaker in Ballard, Thursday Dec. 4, 7-9 pm. Find us outside (usually), by the fire things.

Reminder: the calendar is the source of truth for Xcoders — it’s updated before this blog, sometimes days or weeks before. The calendar is your friend!

Xcoders Social Nov. 20

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 13:09:26 -0800

This week we’re doing a social get-together at the standard place and time: Bale Breaker in Ballard, Thursday Nov. 20, 7-9 pm.

We’re usually outside in a covered section sitting around one of the fire things. Easy to find. See you there!

Xcoders Talk on Thursday: Hal Mueller on LLMs and geodata

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:17:57 -0800

This Thursday we’ll be meeting at North Seattle College for a presentation by Hal Mueller: Using LLMs to enhance your FOSS geodata workflow:

From Hal:

Modern LLMs such as ChatGPT and Claude can be effective partners as you assemble and analyze open source geodata, but you need to keep them on a short leash and maintain an understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve.

We will review case studies you can apply to your work today. You’ll learn how to use LLMs to construct scripts for data download, webscraping, and data cleanup; to update an obsolete codebase; and to understand the legacy code you just inherited and add features and automated tests.

We will look at some LLM blind alleys and explore how to recover from them.

Code examples are in Python, C++, Mapserver, and Swift.

When: Thursday, Nov. 5; meet and mingle at 6:30 pm; talk starts at 7 pm

Where: North Seattle College
9600 College Way N, Seattle, WA 98103, United States
Room LB 1105 in the library

Afterwards we go to the nearby Watershed Pub and Kitchen, which is all friendly to all ages.

(Reminder: see our Calendar page for a calendar you can subscribe to, so you don’t have to wait for a blog post!)

Special Fifth Thursday at Waterwheel Tonight

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 12:28:50 -0800

Tonight’s a special fifth Thursday Seattle Xcoders social — and we’re going, as we usually do on fifth Thursdays, to the Waterwheel on 15th Ave. NW in Ballard. We start around 7 pm and go until we’re finished.

When the weather’s nice we hang out outside — but the weather’s not that nice. So we tend to be at the round tables indoors. It’s not a big place. Look for the programmers. 🧠

Note that the Waterwheel will be closing in a few months. This could be our last time there! Let’s do it up right!

Xcoders Social Oct. 16

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 15:38:46 -0800

The next Xcoders meetup will be a social — Thurs., Oct. 16, 7-9 pm at Bale Breaker in Ballard. (Standard time and place for socials.) We are almost always outside, in back, by the fire things. No problem if it rains — it’s covered.

Remember that you can subscribe to our calendar — see our Calendar page for the link — so you’ll know the plans even before they appear on the blog. 😀

No Longer on Meetup

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 13:09:31 -0800

We had a presence on Meetup.com for many years, but the cost became untenable, and we’ve left.

Here are some ways keep up with Seattle Xcoders:

Add our calendar to your calendar app. See the Calendar page for details
Join the Slack group and chat with other folks
Add our RSS feed to your RSS reader
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on Bluesky
Follow us on Micro.blog

You don’t have to do all of these! 😀 If you do just one, pick the calendar, since events show up there first.

Last Summer Social Meeting

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 08:36:02 -0800

We have our last social meeting of the summer Thursday Sep. 18! We’ll keep doing these, of course, but this may be the last one where it’s so nice out. 🎉

Where: Bale Breaker in Ballard, outside, in the back, around the fire things

When: Thursday Sep. 18, 7 pm to 10 pm (but show up and leave at any time, of course)

We can talk about Liquid Glass! And all the things. 😀

PS We now have a Calendar page that has, among other things, a link to a calendar you can add to your calendar app. Note that events show up in the calendar before they show up in this blog.

September Xcoders Presentations

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:33:04 -0800

We have two presentations Thursday, Sep. 4:

Where: North Seattle College, 9600 College Way N, room LB 1105 in the library

When: Gather and mingle at 6:30 pm. Talks start at 7 pm

The talks are…

Developing a Watchfaces and Widget app from Idea to AppStore by James Clarke and Lisa Valentine

The Seattle Xcoders were the very first beta testers of our app “Remindful Watchfaces & Widget” at the meetup on April 3, 2025. Tonight, UX Designer and App Developer collaborators give an overview of their journey from the need for “tech wellness” in 2024 to an app that has already begun to help users thrive more mindfully in a busy world.

Tapping Into Visual Intelligence in iOS 26 by John Gillilan

Using an example artwork viewing app, we’ll take a dive into the new APIs for 3rd party developers to tap into Visual Intelligence in iOS 26. Beyond this new Visual Intelligence framework, the implementation will leverage other frameworks including App Intents, Core Video, and Vision. And if there’s time, we’ll take a quick look at the new Translation framework and my latest VoiceOver implementation in the same app.

Reminder: if you’d like to give a talk (long or short), contact us at info@xcoders.org. We’re a friendly group! And this is a great place to get some public speaking practice or to explore a topic you’d like to learn. (Or both!)

Surprise Xcoders Social Thursday (Aug. 28)

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 08:18:17 -0800

We don’t normally have an Xcoders event on fourth Thursdays — but this week we do!

Standard time and place for social:

Where: Bale Breaker in Ballard, outside, at the fire thingies

When: 6 pm to 10 pm (but show up and leave at any time, of course)

Why the surprise event? Because longtime Xcoder and friend Olof is visiting, and we all want to see him. 🌴

(It’s beautiful out! You should come even if you don’t know Olof, even if this would be your first Xcoders.)

Special Event! Breakpoint Jam with James Dempsey and the Breakpoints

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:17:17 -0800

We have a very special Xcoders social coming up on the third Thursday of August — a special performance by James Dempsey and the Breakpoints!

You’ve seen him and various Breakpoints (conditional and otherwise) at WWDC, Live Near WWDC — and at any number of conferences such as CocoaConf and Deep Dish Swift.

You may know “Almost Dropped My iPhone” by heart — or at least have wondered how you’ll ever get “The Liki Song” out of your head! 🌴

And now’s your chance to see the legend himself, plus a star-studded lineup of mostly local Breakpoints, at a free outdoors show in a chill venue in Seattle in the summer.

Where: normal place for social events — Bale Breaker and Yonder Cider taproom in Ballard. Outside at the picnic tables.

When: Thursday, August 21, starting at 6 pm (earlier than normal) and going till closing (10 pm). The music will probably start around 7 pm. 7-ish. We’ll play it by ear. :)

Food note — the scheduled food truck is the Thursday regular: Impeckable Chicken.

Seattle Xcoders Party

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 17:11:57 -0800

This Thursday, July 31, we’ll be celebrating longtime Xcoder Brent Simmons’s retirement from the working world! He’s still coding, though — ever and always an Xcoder. 🐥

Where: normal place for social events — Bale Breaker and Yonder Cider taproom in Ballard

When: starting at 5 pm (earlier than normal) and going till closing (10 pm)

There will be cake! 💥

Seattle Xcoders Returns to Presentation Meetings: April 3

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 10:38:20 -0800

It’s been a long time since we’ve had meetings with presentations!

We have managed to keep up with social meetings (held outdoors), because social is important.

But actual presentations are important! And we’re finally back. Presentation meetings will be on the first Thursday of each month, starting April 3. (Social-only meetings will continue on the third Thursday of each month.)

When: Thursday, April 3, 6:30 pm - 9 pm (gather at 6:30 pm; talk starts at 7 pm)

Where: North Seattle College, 9600 College Way North, in room LC 1105 in the library

After: Watershed Pub and Kitchen (all-ages friendly), across the John Lewis bridge, one block from the Northgate Link Light Rail station

You can subscribe to the Xcoders calendar and/or follow along on Meetup. Here’s the Meetup page on the April 3 event.

Note: there’s a social-only meeting sooner: this week, Thursday, March 20, 7 pm - 9 pm, at Bale Breaker & Yonder Cider taproom in Ballard (826 NW 49th St.). We meet outside.

All are welcome! You don’t have to be a coder — the group includes testers, support humans, designers, writers, and everyone who loves Mac and iOS apps. We even welcome managers! 🎩😀

Xcoders Podcast, June/July 2021

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 08:01:04 -0800

This episode, Collin Donnell joins the show to talk a bit about his origin story.

Questions, comments, or topic requests? Get in touch at info@seattlexcoders.org

Links:

Collin Donnell

Host:

Jared Sorge

Xcoders Links:

Xcoders Podcast, May 2021

Sun, 30 May 2021 12:55:35 -0800

This month, Jared is joined by Xcoder Dan Morse, an iOS engineer at Nordstrom and organizer of the Underdog Devs group. The guys talk about Dan’s journey through code school and landing at Nordstrom, as well as how Dan got involved in Underdog Devs and how learning is constant.

Be sure to check out the Xcoders Slack for announcemnts on forthcoming in-person get togethers!

Questions, comments, or topic requests? Get in touch at info@seattlexcoders.org

Links:

Host:

Jared Sorge

Xcoders Links: