This Week in Swift

Swift Thoughts

The big bombshell from last week is that Xcode 8.2 is the last release that will support Swift 2.3. I thought we had a whole year before support was dropped. Oh well... If you haven't upgraded to Swift 3.0 already, here are some great tips from @cocoaphony.

Apple Love

Xcode 8.2 beta

"Xcode 8.2 is the last release that will support Swift 2.3. Please migrate your projects to Swift 2.3 code to Swift 3 syntax by opening the project and choosing Edit > Convert > To Current Swift Syntax" 😱🙀😱🙀😱

If only it was as easy as Edit > Convert > To Current Swift Syntax...

Swift Around the Web

Emptiness

A bit crazy, but what if arrays couldn't be empy?!!! Great thinking by @khanlou on the weird tri-state of arrays and other Swift types that could now be both optional and empty. I like the idea of a self-imposed rule to not have optional arrays or dictionaries if possible:

"The easiest way to get around this is to remember to never store optional arrays as properties. I’m pretty strict about this rule, making sure I don’t mix different types of emptiness. I also apply it other other types that can be “empty” as well — dictionaries, strings, booleans, sets, and sometimes numbers. Having to check two forms of emptiness is something I never want to do."

#iOSdev

iOS True Confessions

An honest post about imposter syndrome as an iOS developer. There might be "basic" things you haven't worked with before, but I think every iOS developer has their own embarrassing list. The important thing is to keep an open mind to learning these when they come up and helping others with things you're good at, but they might not have gotten to.

Swift Holy War: Comments are not an Anti-pattern

Not sure this is truly a holy war, but I agree with both sides. We should definitely be writing code that is expressive without the needs for comments. And let's be honest - those TODOs will never get done. But sometimes comments are necessary - like when there are weird gotcha's in the API or business logic that might make the code slightly weird as a result.

Swift Code

needless - A utility to find needless words in Swift function names.
Apodimark - Fast, flexible markdown parser written in Swift
GRDB.swift - A Swift application toolkit for SQLite databases, with WAL mode support. Blog post here.
AlexaSkillsKit - Swift library to develop custom Alexa Skills
Swish - 👷Build Swift Projects on a Remote Machine within Xcode.
TimelineTableViewCell - Simple timeline view implemented by UITableViewCell written in Swift 3.0

Videos

Mastering TextKit

Amazing deep-dive into TextKit by @k_katsumi. Thanks for explaining the hard and tricky font concepts for developers, especially how to display math 🤓

Swift Eye for the Stringly Typed API

Great overview of hour NSUserDefaults has changed in Swift 3.0 (hint: it is now called UserDefaults) and how to take advantage of Swift's amazing features such as namespacing and protocols to avoid using Strings. Blog post here.

Design

How to create effective push notifications

In iOS 10, notifications are no longer just a feature - it's your app! Prepare (and in fact design) your app to be usable only through notifications. Great tips here. I didn't know notifications are most effective between 6 and 8pm!

In Case You Missed It

The Power of Meeting People

Great post from try! Swift NYC attendee @volbap on the importance of attending conferences and meetup. Love this!

"Well, that's mostly what I've learned: Going to conferences and meetups is not just about learning technical stuff. You also meet new people, you make new connections, you get to know different mindsets, and learn different ways of thinking. You also have fun. You also end up with new ideas. You also change. And by changing you grow, in your personality and in becoming a technical expert. And a big list of etceteras, which can all fit in this fact: You learn about life."

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This Week in Swift November 7th 2016