Issue 348

Comment

I have a favour to ask! A couple of weeks ago I launched the iOS Dev Directory, an attempt to build a comprehensive list of blogs on iOS development. While it certainly had a great launch with over 85 pull requests merged and new sections being added for several non-English language sites, I know it's still only managed to catalogue a fraction of this community.

So, the favour? Most pull requests I had so far were to add the blog of the person or company making the pull request. This is absolutely fine of course, but what about the rest of the community that don't subscribe here or haven't yet seen the site? Please check the directory again, not just for your own site but also for the other sites that you love and contribute the missing ones. If there's nothing missing, please spread this message so that it reaches people who might not have seen the directory yet. I'd really love to get a whole load more pull requests this week to build it out even further.

Thanks! Now, let's get on with this week's round up of links…

News

Writing Swift: Adventures in Compiler Mods

This is a fantastic article from Erica Sadun on how to approach a very simple (if there is such a thing!) change to the Swift compiler. If you've been thinking about getting your feet wet with contributing to Swift, then following along with this article is going to be a great way to get going.

Xcode Releases

How was I not aware of this site? 😀 Direct download links and release notes for (almost) every version of Xcode released since "Xcode Tools 1.0". Of course, most of these won't run on modern versions of macOS, but it's still an interesting resource and I spent a little while reading through the early release notes.

Note: I did have some problems getting the links to work at first, even after signing in to the developer site. I eventually had to use a different browser and sign in to the Apple developer site, before clicking the direct links to make it work.

Tools

Care and Feeding of Xcode Configurations

Steve Kalkwarf on why xcconfig files are wonderful, and why you should use them. If you're not already on board, read this article, but even If you are, read this article 😀 as it contains some fantastic tips (like this useful repository listing all Xcode 9 warning and error settings). Also on the same topic this week, Paulo Andrade also had some good advice for using xcconfig files to deal better with build variations.

Code

Detecting Whisky brands with Core ML and IBM Watson services

After last week's link to the CoreML and IBM Watson announcement you might be looking for a practical example if you want to have a play. Turns out Martin Mitrevski has put one together for us all to learn from. This is a detailed walk through of everything you need on both the Watson side and also on the CoreML side.

Simplifying Collection View Delegates with Functional Programming

Daniel Tull with an interesting post on simplifying working with collection view layouts. The post is certainly worth a read but for me what struck me again how the interface between Cocoa Touch and Swift is often where my ugliest Swift code is written. I do wonder what this would all have looked like if Swift had arrived before the iOS SDK existed.

Stack Views And Multi-Line Labels

I've hit this problem so many times myself, and you probably have too even though you may have just assumed it was your fault for not getting your Auto Layout constraints right. Keith Harrison explains.

Why you should not name your @IBActions didTapButton

Are you naming your action methods badly? If you're using delegate style naming then Joachim Kurz has some guidance for you.

Design

7 Basic Rules for Button Design

You might think that an article about how to design a button is obsolete in 2018, but the last few years of super minimal design, originally starting with iOS 7 have shown that this is really not a solved problem at all. Nick Babich gives us the low down on what we need to think about.

Videos

Videos from try! Swift Tokyo 2018

The try! Swift series of conferences had their most recent outing to Tokyo just over a month ago and all the session videos are now available! There's also a second YouTube channel from the conference showing the lighter side of things that happened there!

Books

Flight School

I'm sure that everyone who read about Mattt Thompson's return to being independent wondered what he was going to be working on first. Looks like a return to writing is first! The plan is to produce one book a month on a focused topic. The first in the series is available for pre-order now and covers Codable.

And finally...

The secret of being a 10x developer

Only 9x more to go Daniel! 🤫

Issue 348 April 20th 2018