Swift Thoughts
Now that I got the Swift 3.0 upgrade out of the way, I've been thinking a lot about how to best re-architect my app to work with the all the new iOS 10 features and platforms. I'll be speaking about this at #pragma mark and iOS Conf SG in October!
Apple Love
Swift Protobuf Plugin: Generate Swift code with this protoc plugin
"I guess Apple decided that JSON is a relic of the past along with Objective-C" - @cjwirth 😂
Use iPad to Program Robots with Swift Playgrounds
Control a 🤖 straight from this Swift Playground Book on the iPad 💥
Swift Around the Web
Swift 3.1 – prefix(while:) and drop(while:)
In SwiftLand 🐥🌍, we're already moving forward to Swift 3.1 😅 Here, @rosslebeau covers new and shiny Swifty methods prefix(while:) and drop(while:) coming soon to Xcode near you!
Arbitrary Underscores
😍
Did you know that in Swift you can add arbitrary underscores to number literals to make them more readable? e.g.
let bignum = 1000_000_000
Sponsored
The Swift Algorithms Book (Revised for Swift 3.0)
Written for students and professionals, the 2nd edition of Swift Algorithms & Data Structures blends modern code, illustrations and computer science to help you pass the interview or build your next app. Revised and updated for Swift 3.0, the new book takes a fresh approach to explain concepts that power search engines, databases and social networks. Use coupon code THEROBOT at checkout to receive a 20% discount!
Rollbar: Turn Errors into Awesome.
Over 50,000 developers rely on Rollbar to track 11,788,093,522 errors..
#iOSdev
iOS 10 adoption
It's that sweet time of the year when you get to drop iOS 8! Oh, and iOS 10 adoption is now at 39% 📈
Sticker Accessibility
“Bacon P-N-G Accessibility Label” 🙉 Good reminder to add a proper accessibility label to your stickers... it'll take 2 seconds and make a huge difference for many people!
Swift Code
- ProtocolNetwork - Sample project to show how to use protocol/extension to build a network layer
- files-playgroundbook - File Browser Swift Playground Book
- TwicketSegmentedControl - Custom UISegmentedControl replacement for iOS, written in Swift
- ImageSlideshow - Swift image slideshow with circular scrolling, timer and full screen viewer
- TableViewDragger - A cells of UITableView can be rearranged by drag and drop.
- Colorblinds - Colorblinds is an easy to use library so simulate color blindness in your app
Videos
Pushing the Envelope with iOS 10 Notifications
The one big warning I have left in my app after upgrading to iOS 10 is about Notification methods that have been deprecated... I've left it up because I have to completely rethink, relearn, and redo notifications. I'll be watching this video a few times... Sample code here!
Say It Ain't So: Implementing Speech Recognition in Your App
Given that we're now stuck with AirPods 🎧, adding a speech recognition to your app is more important than ever IMHO. But, alas, SiriKit is super limited and doesn't apply to most apps. Luckily, there are also several Speech APIs, so all is not lost! I'm excited to start playing with these myself! Sample code here 👏👏👏
In Case You Missed It
Swift 3.0 Refactoring Cues
I’ve been upgrading the try! Swift app to Swift 3.0 for 3 days with no end in sight until finally... BUILD SUCCEEDED!! And although the process was definitely frustrating, a lot of the things that needed fixing were very repetitive and a good opportunity to refactor 💪
On Open Source
CocoaPods' Lasting Impact
"I can’t speak to what CocoaPods is, but I believe that CocoaPods’ lasting impact on the iOS developer community won’t be a tool, but rather an idea: that iOS developers can build their own developer tools and improve their own ecosystem."
Beautiful! As Swift developers, we have the extra advantage of having Swift be open source. I love this related talk by @simjp on the subject as well. Let's do this!
Other Platforms
The official release of Swift 3.0 means a HUGE upgrade for your favorite Server-Side Frameworks 🎉
- Perfect 2.0 Has Arrived 👌
- Vapor is officially at 1.0 👍
- Hello Kitura 1.0 👏
General Availability: IBM Bluemix Runtime for Swift
"IBM gladly announces general availability of the IBM Bluemix Runtime for Swift. By including the latest Swift tools and taking care of system dependencies, this runtime allows you to focus on writing your server-side Swift services. And experienced enterprise developers take note: the Swift runtime includes all optimizations necessary to run in IBM Bluemix public, dedicated and local cloud deployments."
More background about Swift for the enterprise here.
Swift Jobs
Write Swift Full Time
- Sr. iOS Engineer - Goldfish at Target - San Francisco & Sunnyvale, CA
- Mobile Developer iOS at nebenan.de - Berlin, Germany
- iOS Developer at Stich Fix - San Francisco, CA
Random Cool Stuff
Spectacles by Snap Inc.
No matter what you think about Snap Inc.'s new Spectacles, you got to give it to them on design + marketing. It's like Google Glasses but actually looks cool and starts with a single use-case -- shooting really cool circular video (and posting it on Snapchat) rather than just being an expensive and ugly everything for everyone. Impressive.