Swift Thoughts
Watch Watch Watch!!!!!!!! That's all folks! As in, that's all we know as developers about WatchKit. Way too many questions left to the imagination. My biggest question is: Can we delay the holidays until the Watch ships? Looks like it'll be a while until we get our hands on one of these, so my plan is to continue enjoying Swift and all the cool iOS 8 APIs (HealthKit!) for the rest of the year. BTW, Swift 1.0 is OUT!!!!!!!
Apple Love
In case your live-streaming of the Apple Live event cut out (or was incomprehensible due to your inability to understand Chinese), you can re-watch it here. Here are the incredible goodies for you this week:
- Apple Live
- Swift Has Reached 1.0
- Xcode 6 GM seed
- Xcode 6.1 beta for OS X Yosemite *Xcode 6 Release Notes
Oh, and in case you didn't think Apple is changing, they live-blogged the event! I really enjoyed the photos from Apple's Hands–on Pavilion. Wish I was there...
Swift Around the Web
I love reading Swift articles from people who have deep experience with other programming languages and share great use-cases for how advanced concepts from those other languages can be applied to write more powerful Swift and iOS code. Happy Swifting!
Objc.io Issue #16: Swift
This month's objc.io issue focuses on Swift of course. While Swift is still new, and there are no "experts", these articles focus on some aspects of Swift that are new and potentially very foreign to Objective-C developers. Topics include functional patterns, value types, playground prototyping and more. Make sure to add these to your weekend must-read list!
Changes to the Swift Standard Library in Xcode 6.1
It was great to build my projects in XCode GM and have nothing break for once! The good news is that even though Swift is now officially 1.0, it will continue to be improved. Oh, and in case you didn't believe that, some of the new improvements and changes are already out in XCode 6.1. Arispeed Velocity highlights the changes. Thank you Swift team!
The rules of being...
sketchyTech has churned out way too many great blog posts to link to this week, so I just recommend going straight to the blog - they are all simple and quick to read but are invaluable for any Swift developer. Some of my favorites include:
Create Documentation for your Swift Playground
Looks like Andrew Bancroft has figured out how to hack Playground files to add the nicely-styled documentation included in the official Apple Playgrounds. HTML and CSS required!
First Class Functions and Delayed Evaluation in Swift
This is a cool way of doing lazy instantiation in Swift. I love seeing real-life use-cases for functional programming. "Functions are first-class citizens in Swift. If you're not familiar with the concept of first-class functions, this simply means that functions are data... This concept of 'functions as data' enables the development of complex systems composed of small bits of reusable logic in an elegant and concise way."
Flattenin' Your Mappenin'
Rob Napier does an in-depth walk-through of a common problem that happens with mapping, nesting.
WATCH
From all the articles and speculation about the Watch, these are the two I actually read :) But seriously, I cannot recommend these enough:
A Watch Guy's Thoughts On The Apple Watch After Seeing It In The Metal
I don't have a watch, and I don't know much about watches, so I LOVED reading this review from a guy who actually knows what he's talking about. This is a beautiful review of the Watch compared to other watches. I loved reading about the design details Apple implemented - things that many of us wouldn't notice. It's great to know that Apple is still Apple at it's core.
WatchKit Speculation
This is a great summary of the thoughts and questions developers are having right now about WatchKit. From what I've seen of how the Android Watch works, WatchKit seems pretty similar based on what we know so far - this includes the watch being more of an extension of the iPhone rather than it's own independent device. And, of course, there is one thought out of many that stands out in my mind: "Will you have to write WatchKit apps in Swift? Seems that would not be necessary on a technical level, but it feels like a possible Apple-like move to encourage adoption."
Swift Code
Now that Swift is out of Beta, I expect to see a lot more libraries every week. Here are some good ones from this week!
- Stripe: Apple Pay - Easy Apple Pay integration for businesses built on Stripe
- EmitterKit - An alternative to NSNotificationCenter for Swift
- VFLToolbox - Fancy Swift implementation of the Visual Format Language
- Shutup Button - Sound on / off button with a cool animation
- FrostedSidebar - Hamburger Menu using Swift and iOS 8 API's
- OAuth2 - OAuth2 framework for OS X and iOS, written in Swift.
Videos
Chris Eidhof: Functional Programming in Swift
This is the recording of Chris Eidhof's talk at the SLUG meetup last week. If you watch one video this week, I highly recommend this one! I don't have much previous experience with Functional Programming, so this talk opened up my mind to a different type of Swift thinking. I'm now reading Chris's book on Functional Programming in Swift to learn a lot more! This talk will blow your mind.
In Case You Missed It
This week, I've been creating content in different formats and on different platforms. Here it is in case you missed it!
5 Tips for Power Learning
This is slightly of-topic, but also very on-topic. I've spent the past few years continuously learning (love being a programmer!), so these are some tips I'd like to share for learning Swift most efficiently. Enjoy!
The Many Faces of Swift Functions
I contributed an article about Swift Functions in this month's objc.io! My goal was to clear up the confusion around functions vs methods and how parameters work, as well as make it easy for Objective-C developers to make the transition to Swift. Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
Building TableViews with Swift and iOS8
Yesterday, I had an amazing time talking about TableViews at the SLUG Meetup at Eventrbite HQ. The source code for the Seinfeld Quotes App discussed in the slides is on Github here. Sign up to the video mailing list to get notified when the video comes out! (I'll also include the video in the newsletter next week).
Random Cool Stuff
Wondering how the icon is made? Just click "option + shift + k" on a Mac! Thanks Mikhail Sinanan for the tip :)