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.
Business
Launching a Mobile Game Business
In this two-part series (Part 1, Part 2), @anthonymhurtado walks through the process of launching your own mobile game business covering everything from market research and selecting your game genre to marketing and promoting your app.
gameanalytics.com
Spending Money to Make Money – How We Measure Our Online Advertising
With the recent introduction of Search Ads Apple have provided an interesting option when it comes to generating additional sales for your apps but should you decide to take the plunge how do you know your advertising is actually effective? @baconstarvation provides an introduction to some of the key metrics you need to track in any advertising campaign.
intercom.com
Sponsored Link
New Book: RxSwift – Reactive Programming with Swift
The popularity of reactive programming continues to grow on an ever-increasing number of platforms and languages. In “RxSwift: Reactive Programming with Swift”, you’ll learn how to use RxSwift to create complex reactive applications on iOS, and how to easily solve common application design issues as well. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to exercise full control over the RxSwift library and leverage the full power of reactive programming in your apps!
raywenderlich.com
Design
Accessible Interface Design
@101babich with some great tips on how to design user interfaces that are accessible to people with all types of disability.
uxplanet.org
Swift
Thoughts on Swift Access Control
Since it’s introduction, access control has been the source of some significant debate on the Swift Evolution Mailing lists with it’s current implemented in Swift 3 being a backward step for many. In this article, @jesse_squires takes a look a the path we have taken to get here and discusses some of the implications that this journey has had on the Swift language, the Swift community and the Swift Evolution process as a whole.
jessesquires.com
Reduce
@gregheo covers some of the basics of Swift’s reduce function explaining some of it’s power and how you can use it as the building block for some of Swift’s other high-order functions. A great (and simple) explanation. ?
swiftunboxed.com
Swift + Attributes
Attributes are a useful, although lesser-known, aspect of the Swift language. In this article, @JordanMorgan10 takes a detailed look at what they are and and how to use them.
medium.com
Code
How to Make a Web Crawler in Swift
So is Swift scripting ready for prime time? In this article, @zntfdr dives into Swift scripting using @johnsundell‘s Marathon to write a basic Web Crawler in Swift. Great little project.
medium.com
Implementing Push Notifications on iOS with Firebase
Jayven N with a comprehensive walkthrough on how to setup, configure and implementation push notifications in your iOS app using Firebase. Definitely an option to think about.
appcoda.com
Libraries
Analyzing Third-Party Libraries
It’s all to easy to turn to turn to CocoaPods, Carthage or Swift’s package manager when you’re under pressure and need to quickly add a new feature or control to your app. However, if you don’t think about things carefully, doing so can open you up to unknown issues further down the line. In this article, @benjaminbrooks provides some useful advice on the things to consider when deciding whether to include a third-party library.
martiancraft.com
Stop Weak-Strong Dance
Closures. They’re extremely useful but also a great source of retain cycles in your code. @merowing_ explains the problem and also introduces his new micro-framework to help.
merowing.info
MainThreadGuard
With asynchronous code and the prevalent use of closures, it’s all too easy to accidentally execute UIKit code on something other than the main thread. MainThreadGuard from @onmyway133 can help with a simple extension to UIView that causes an assertion to be thrown if you’ve accidentally missed something.
github.com
Videos
Git at Scale: Managing Swift/Obj-C Code & Coders
Brett Koonce talks all things git, looking at how to use it, some simple rules you should follow and how to avoid some gotcha’s when using git in partnership with Xcode.
realm.io
Your Refactoring Toolbox
@bobbins discusses refactoring, why should should do it, what a successful refactoring looks like and some tools and tips to help you along the way. Great talk.
skilled.io
Comment
Welcome another week of Swift Developments! I’m super happy to see Apple breaking with tradition this week and releasing some of it’s future plans for an upgradable, expandable, Mac Pro! As someone with an old cheese grater under my desk (still one of my favourite machines) it’s welcome news and has definitely put a smile on my face. All I’ve got to do now is save, because if one things certain, it ain’t gonna to be cheap!