Issue 252

Comment

There's been a huge conversation on the lack of dynamism in Swift over the last couple of weeks. It was originally started by Brent Simmons, but quickly extended to all corners of both the Mac and iOS community.

Even though Swift isn't currently dynamic you're still relying on those dynamic Objective-C roots every single time you call into UIKit. However, the specific point about whether Swift needs dynamism isn't what I found interesting. Instead, I think this is more about the Swift development process.

I agree with Wil Shipley when he says:

I urge anyone who's speculating about Swift's possible future missteps to look hard at the team that's brought us LLVM, clang, ARC, and Swift, and think, "it's pretty likely they'll handle this," and not, "OH GOD EVERYTHING I LOVE IS ENDING."

The team working on Swift inside Apple is incredible, and I trust them to make the right decisions for the various Apple platforms. I talked last week about how carefully and respectfully they are listening to the community and I'm confident that if dynamism needs to be added, it will be. Or, we end up with a different solution which might turn out to be even better.

That's not to say that this discussion isn't valuable! In fact, the discussion is essential and will certainly have been closely watched inside Apple.

This kind of conversation is the process, and the process is good.

News

ABI Compatibility: Whoopdty Do, What Does It All Mean?

Fantastic post by Ben Snider on ABI compatibility. If you're looking someone to really break down the pros and cons of this subject, this article is it. While we're on the subject, I also liked Ben Sandofsky's post on why big apps aren't moving to Swift (yet) which also talks about ABI compatibility.

Will We See Android-Like Instant Apps on iOS?

Last week, I just made up a silly letter to Craig Federighi when linking to Android's new instant apps feature. This week, Arkadiusz Holko has done the much more sensible thing and dug into how it might actually be possible. Nice work. 😀

Tools

Code Coverage From the Command Line With Clang

Alastair Houghton demystifies getting results out of the clang/LLVM code coverage tools. It feels like this process needs some love, but until it gets it you should be able to get it working with this post.

Code

Make your app extensible with JavaScript Core

Micha Mazaheri on the process of allowing Paw (which is excellent if you haven't tried it) to support JavaScript extensions. There's all sorts of information in here, from the technical details of how to do it right through to how it encouraged them to think about their app architecture.

Render: Swift and UIKit a la React

If you like the concept of your UI being purely a function of your app's state, but are not quite ready to go all in on something like React Native then this is going to be worth a look. The basic idea is that you construct your UI from scratch every time and let the library figure out what changes to the view hierarchy are necessary.

Detecting low power mode

So after Uber recently talked about about their data on how customers with a very low battery are willing to accept almost any amount of surge pricing, you might be wondering how you can do the same bump the prices of your IAPs 😆. Keith Harrison gives us the details.

URL Pattern Matching

After last week's pattern matching articles, John Morgan has followed up with an article on using pattern matching to build a URL routing system.

Design

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

Tristan Harris on how the apps and products that we build affect people's lives, and not always in a good way. This article is long, but worth reading from start to finish. You'll have heard various bits before, but all together it makes for a powerful warning on how we design software.

Why porting an iOS design to Android will not work

You'll have heard many times that porting iOS app designs to Android (and vice versa) doesn't work as it won't "fit" on the other platform. I don't think I've ever seen those "fit" issues discussed in detail though. Landon Robinson spells it out for us, along with some great examples.

Business and Marketing

Monument Valley in Numbers: Year 2

Almost 18 months ago, ustwo made a post on the numbers after the first 9 months of Monument Valley. This week, they followed it up with another one covering two years. Interestingly, their revenue per download was much higher in year 2 which you might not expect. It's not all about the launch!

And finally...

Larry Ellison plans to save Apple with Steve Jobs

If you want to watch it in video form it starts at 14:59. I wonder what the company would look like if Steve had said yes.

Issue 252 May 27th 2016