I always find the stories about how apps come into existence fascinating and this one from Alexander Griekspoor about Agenda is no different. I also love to see in-development screenshots and videos, and there's some of those here too. It's worth a read!
A few weeks ago there was an extended discussion on the future of Objective-C and I linked to a couple of different stories on it. This week Jason Brennan posted a follow up to his original article. He argues that we're not thinking big enough by just considering a replacement for Objective-C and that we need to think of a bigger picture on how we build software in a more modern way. It's a lengthy article but certainly one worth reading, and looking back on in 5 years.
I really liked this article from Graham Lee. When I worked as a product manager, I always took the approach that the next sprint should be fully planned, the next couple should be loosely planned but that after that the backlog is very fluid. However, the important point is that even though the backlog may be vague, the overall product direction should always be clear.
Try not to get lost in this and emerge smiling an hour later like I did.
One thing I heard repeatedly last week was people saying "What are we going to complain about now?". I was pretty confident that we would all find something suitable to fill the void now that Christmas came early, Justin Williams kicks us off.
Handling the Next button automatically
As a user, I really appreciate when an app takes the time to add a keyboard accessory to form filling UI to make it easy to move between fields, but it doesn't come for free. Roland Leth takes us through what it might take to automate it in this post. It strikes me that nextKeyView could be useful on iOS after all.
Great idea from Craig Hockenberry. I suspect that many of us have suffered from the situation of trying to ship a bug fix and receiving a rejection for something completely unrelated (I know I have!). I guess it's very slightly open to abuse, but I'm not sure it would be a big issue as your app would need to take care of the problem for its next release. As usual, I won't be holding my breath though.
Next steps for the Swift Server work group
The try! Swift conference in New York this week hosted an announcement from the Swift Server work group about their plans, and here's Ted Kremenek with a quick summary. It's also worth checking out the Recommended Server Libraries section of the server page on Swift.org for a description of what this group is aiming for.
