Issue 442

Comment

I stopped mentioning every release of Xcode here a long time ago, but I'll make an exception for the beta of 11.4 that Apple released this week. It's significant.

Swift 5.2 (including the diagnostic architecture changes), universal purchases between macOS and iOS apps (both Catalyst and AppKit), build speed increases, massive simulator improvements (including simulated remote push notifications!), package manager improvements, and the most critical bug fix of all. Finally. 😬

The full release notes are huge. You'll want to read them.

News

What’s new in Swift 5.2

So what's new in 5.2? Paul Hudson has a quick rundown here, and John Sundell follows it up with a bit more information on passing key paths as functions. I'm not a big fan of callAsFunction, but I'm very much looking forward to the new diagnostic architecture being part of our everyday toolkit.

Introducing Swift Crypto

I didn't expect to read about a new cross-platform crypto framework that echoes the functionality of CryptoKit from Apple this week, but here it is. This is a fantastic step forward for Swift on the server, and I hope it prevents anyone from ever trying to build their own crypto implementation. 😬

Tools

Highlight some code in Xcode, then...

I knew that you could insert quotation marks in Xcode this way, but I hadn't tried it with any of the brackets. 🤯

Sitrep

Interested in what frameworks you're importing? How many lines of code your biggest source file has? Or how many classes, structs, enums, protocols, and extensions you've written? This new tool from Paul Hudson will tell you all that, and more and should give you something to paste into Slack on a Friday afternoon. 👍

Code

URLFormat

I really like the idea of this new URL parsing and formatting library from Ilya Puchka. We do so much manipulation of URLs in virtually every app, and the code that we use to do it is rarely unified. It's the perfect job for a library, like this one. 👍

Recognizing Speech Locally on a iOS Device

I wish that I could go back in time and tell a younger version of myself that in 2020 you'd be able to accurately (🤷‍♂️) recognise natural speech using nothing but a computer that fits in your pocket. It's incredible. Here's Andy Ibanez telling us just how to do it by using the Speech Framework.

Two-way communication between an iOS WKWebView and a web page

The great UIWebView removal is still rolling towards us, so if you haven't yet purged it from your apps then this piece by Ioannis Diamantidis might get you where you need to be.

Autofocusing a TextField in SwiftUI

Hard to say for sure, I guess this is the price we pay for living on the bleeding edge.

Here's Dave Nott with a great example of the real-world experience of developing with SwiftUI right now. If you feel like you're falling behind, this is the kind of stuff you're missing. 😬

Upsampling in Core ML

In these days where even videos from 1896 can be upscaled successfully it might be worth knowing a bit more about how it's done. Honestly, this article from Matthijs Hollemans is probably a bit niche, but I really enjoyed it so here it is!

Design

Dynamic Master Detail View Background Colors

I found out when reading this article from Jordan Morgan that I design in very much the same way that he does. I look at what Apple does, and do what great artists do. 😂

Also, look... Objective-C code! 😱

Videos

Videos from BA: Swiftable 2019

By all accounts BA: Swiftable was a fantastic conference. If you missed it, as I did, at least you can catch up on all of the videos! 👍

Books

Thinking in SwiftUI

A new book from the objc.io team that aims to explain how you'll have to rethink view construction, updates, layout, and animations with SwiftUI. I also really like the idea of giving a weekly Q&A session to anyone who purchases the book during the beta period. What a fantastic way to end up with a book that's more likely to actually answer the questions of its audience.

Jobs

Senior iOS Engineer @ Ground News – Award-winning startup, backed by Facebook, TechStars is looking for Senior iOS developer to launch 'Spotify for News'. Looking for strong consumer app experience. – Remote, or Kitchener Ontario

iOS Developer @ reBuy – Ready to make the world more sustainable with reBuy? We are an international and innovation-friendly company that strives for a more sustainable future. Join our small mobile team and enjoy truly flexible working hours and our weekly 'Try-day' for professional development. Follow the link on our job ad to have a sneak peek to our tech department! – Berlin Germany

There are more than 40 jobs currently active over at iOS Dev Jobs, so if you're looking then you know what to do.

And finally...

I told you cross-platform apps were a bad idea! 😂

Issue 442 February 7th 2020