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.
Swift
Swift 5.1 Collection Diffing
@zntfdr provides a deep dive into the new diffing capabilities introduced into Swift 5.1. If you haven’t done so already I’d put this one on your list reading list as it has the potential to save you a lot of debugging effort down the line.
fivestars.blog
Code
What’s New in Natural Language APIs in iOS 13
Apple’s NaturalLanguage framework debuted at last years WWDC and wraps up some powerful machine learning capabilities for analyzing and understanding text content. This new tutorial from @sai_k1065 walks you through some of the new features added at this years WWDC.
appcoda.com
So They’ve Signed in with Apple, Now What?
It’s a common problem with all new frameworks – there’s nice introductory material but not so much when you start digging into the detail. As it turns out, Apple’s new Sign in with Apple feature is at this point and with many developers are rushing to add this features to their apps over the summer @parrots has been kind enough to discuss some of the things he has learnt and trade-offs he’s decided to make.
curtisherbert.com
Managing Background Tasks With the New Task Scheduler in iOS 13
A new addition to iOS 13 this year was the new BackgroundTasks framework – a new framework for executing long-running tasks in the background and for periodically refreshing your app data in the background. @mecid has been taking a look at some of the details.
medium.com
Photo Stacking in iOS with Vision and Metal
Dive into the world of computational photography with this really interesting tutorial from @yonomitt that shows you how to use Apple’s Vision, CoreImage and Metal frameworks to stack multiple photos together to automagically remove elements from the image. I enjoyed this one.
raywenderlich.com
Tools
Unused Images and Resources Cleanup in Xcode
Over time, it’s not unusual for cruft to build up within your project. With features regularly getting refactored, redesigned or removed @twannl shows you how to clean up those unused image assets with the help of some of the most popular open-source tools.
avanderlee.com
Testing
Advanced Testing Using `Behavior` in Quick
Improve your real-world testing skills with this article from @VojtaStavik which introduces `Behavior` – one of the hidden gems of the Quick testing framework that lets you leverage it’s generic behavior to easily write re-usable test specifications.
vojtastavik.com
Videos
Hacking with Swift Live 2019
The only downside of having a few weeks off was not being able to make @twostraws inaugural Hacking with Swift Live event that was held in early July. Overall the event seems to have been a real success through, raising over $30,000 for charity and as an added bonus many of the talks are also now available online for your viewing pleasure.
hackingwithswift.com
ADDC 2019
If you’re looking for a wider view on mobile app development then make sure you also check out this batch of videos from ADDC 2019 covering app design, user experience, SwiftUI and a little Android (if you’re feeling adventurous)!
addconf.com
And we’re back! It’s been good to have some time off over the last couple of weeks, both to recharge the batteries but to also take a bit of a break from all things tech which included turning my hand to more practical endeavors like woodworking (Red Cedar is great to work with!) and doing some proper (and regular) exercise – something that I’ve been letting slip lately. Overall it’s been a nice change and as helped me put some things back into balance that had quietly skewed over the last six months or so. The lesson then? Well if you’re anything like me and spend hours in front of a screen – remember to take a moment to check yourself once in a while – time away from the keyboard to relax and look after yourself can have huge benefits for your wellbeing and creativity. Ok, with that said, you’re not here to hear about what I’ve been up to on my holiday’s – you’re here for the links – so without further ado let’s dive into a bit of a round-up of some of the articles that caught my eye over the last couple of weeks. Enjoy.