Swift Developments is a hand-curated newsletter containing a weekly selection of the best links, videos, tools and tutorials for people interested in designing and developing their own apps using Swift.
Design
How to Develop an Eye for Design
As a developer, you might not be blessed with a flare for art or design but all is not lost. @kathleen_warner provides some tips on how to develop your own design skills.
uxdesign.cc
Scrolling Interactions and Techniques
With their limited screen real-estate, scrolling is an inevitable part of designing mobile UIs. In the article, @josevirgilalmeda explores some design best practices for incorporating scrolling into your own designs.
uxdesign.cc
Designing Better Notifications
Notifications can be double-edged sword. In this article, @benjaminbrooks provides some interesting thoughts on how to improve the design of notifications within your app so that they integrated and complement peoples lives rather than being simply annoying.
uxdesign.cc
Architecture
So Swift, So Clean Architecture for iOS
@basememara puts frameworks and design patterns aside to look at a platform, framework, technology and UI agnostic approach to building iOS apps – Uncle Bob’s Clean Architecture.
basememara.com
Swift
What’s New in Swift
Struggling to keep up with all the changes in the Swift language? Check out this new site from @twostraws which provides a great summary of all the latest Swift changes along with example code to help you get up to speed.
whatsnewinswift.com
Reimplementation of Implicitly Unwrapped Optionals
With a new re-implementation of Implicitly Unwrapped Optionals now available in recent snapshots of the Swift compiler, the Swift.org team have published a new post outlining how these changes affect the Swift language. It’s worth a read as it changes how implicitly unwrapped optionals work and in many cases changes the type that an implicitly unwrapped optional receives under the hood.
swift.org
Code
Generating Text With Markov Chains in Swift
@mikeash teaches you how to create your next New Your Times Best Seller using Swift and Markov chains. A fun little project.
mikeash.com
iOS File Management with FileManager and Protocol-Oriented Swift
@iosbrain dives into the iOS File Management APIs, looking at the underlying file system structure for your app and how to access and manipulate files locally on a device.
iosbrain.com
Tools
Exploring Apps Without Jailbreaking
Ever wanted to find out how one of your favourite apps worked? @nathangitter outlines some simple tests you can perform to work out how a given app works under the hood – no jailbreaking required.
medium.com
Libraries
Introducing Swift For TensorFlow
It’s alive! After it’s announcement in March, this week saw Swift for TensorFlow officially launched as an open-source project on GitHub! The release was also accompanied by a blog post listing a number of supporting documents that are well worth reading if you’re looking to take the new framework for a spin.
github.com
Testing
Watch Out for Protocol Extensions in your Swift API
An interesting article from @norapsi looking at a bit of a gotcha around trying to unit test API code that depends on a protocol extension. The cause? The subtleties of dispatching in Swift.
medium.com
Videos
Bootstrapping the Machine Learning Training Process
If you’ve been meaning to have a look at Core ML and machine learning, this talk from App Builders 2018 by @meghafon is one to watch – it provides a great introduction on how to bootstrap machine learning within your app and more importantly when and where you should use machine learning.
youtube.com
Swift Generics – The 5 Stages of PATs
Swift generics and protocols with associated types are two of Swift’s most powerful features but also come with a relatively steep learning curve. In this talk, @hartbit takes you on a tour of Swift generics and in doing so, helps explain how PATs work and how to handle them in your code.
youtube.com