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
Deadlines – The Black Box of Product Management
Deadlines. A motivation or a distraction? @BrandonMChu looks at how deadlines can be a powerful tool for influencing the behaviour of your development team and how utilising them (in the right way) can force your team to not only focus on the essentials but also spark the creativity that is needed for your team to perform at its best.
medium.com
Staying Competitive With App Updates
With Apple recently starting to remove old, unmaintained apps from the App Store, @kylerichter looks at the benefits that keeping your app update to date can bring both now and in the future.
martiancraft.com
Design
The Science Behind Addictive Mobile Games
As anyone who has lost 2 hours to one of the mobile gaming titans such as Candy Crush, Angry Birds or Pokémon Go can attest, there are certain characteristics built into these games that make each of them subtly addictive in their own ways. But what exactly are these characteristics that keep their users playing for hours on end? The team at @protoio investigate.
prototypr.io
UX Wireframing: The Bedrock of Inferface Useability
Wireframing is one of the earliest steps of the design process but seems to be a polarising topic within the design community with some viewing wireframes as a waste of time, whilst others view them as a key part of the design process. In this article, the team at @tubikstudio look at the relative merits of wireframing and provides some useful resources if you decide you want include it in your own design process.
uxplanet.org
Swift
Reflectable Enums in Swift 3
Mirror mirror on the wall… In this article, @bach4life shows one approach for handling heterogenous associated types for Swift enums by using Swift’s Mirror API’s to peek inside each instance.
ijoshsmith.com
Code
In-App Language Change in iOS
For the most part, the Apple SDK’s have great I18N support built in but things aren’t so rosy when it comes to changing the in-app language at run-time. This is not to say it’s impossible though as @radiantav explains.
aplus.rs
A Case For Using Storyboards on iOS
Storyboards. Code. Storyboards. Code. It’s the perennial debate amongst developers about the relative merits of each approach. In this article, @marinbenc puts forward the case for the storyboard side of the fence providing some hints and tips for how to use them, how to avoid some of the common pitfalls as well as highlighting some of the benefits they can bring to your code base.
cobeisfresh.com
Testing
How to Run Swift UI Tests With a Mock API Server
You’re probably aware that unit tests should generally avoid using network calls within your tests but this isn’t necessarily the case with UI tests. So what can you do if you want to perform UI tests on an application that uses some sort of network API? @MarcoSantaDev provides a potential solution.
marcosantadev.com
Tools
Brisk
Brisk is a macOS app by @smileykeith which aims to make filing Radars a much simpler prospect and includes some nice features including two-factor authentication and cross-posting to Open Radar. A nice tool to have in the toolbox.
github.com
Evolution – App
I’ve said before – keeping up with everything that his happening on Swift Evolution is like drinking from a fire-hose – however, things have got a little easier this week with the release of a new app called Evolution by @tholanda which provides a nice clean interface for tracking the state of the various Swift proposals. For me, it’s a big help. ?
swift-evolution.io
Libraries
GLInAppPurchase
Bring a little style to your in-app purchase with this tinder-style in-app purchase banner.
github.com
Cluster
Cluster by @lasha_ makes it super-easy to add map annotation clustering to your location based applications.
github.com
UIFontComplete
No more mistyping those font names with UIFontComplete from @din0sr. A useful library providing an extension to UIFont along with a Font enum to make working with fonts and font names much more reliable.
github.com
Videos
Clarity, Cohesion, Coupling and Complexity – How Can We Write Better Code?
In this talk from Swift Summit 2016, @gregheo talks about the four-‘C’s: clarity, coupling, cohesion and complexity and looks at how we can increase the quality of your code we write by increasing the amount of code we read. Good talk.
skilled.io
iOSCon 2017 Videos
If you thought you’re productivity was going to be high this week the bad news is that the bunch of videos from iOSCon 2017 are going to be big distraction. There’s some great talks in here and it’s definitely worth finding some time to work your way through a few of them.
skillsmatter.com
Other
So what’s This GraphQL Thing I Keep Hearing About?
You may have heard about GraphQL and the promises it brings for simplifying loading data from a server but if like me, you hadn’t dived into all the details, this article from @SachaGreif is a good place to start.
freecodecamp.com
Comment
It’s been a relaxing week for me this week with a bit of an extension to the Easter break giving me some much needed down time and some time to consciously step away from the keyboard – something I’m really not very good at doing. However, despite the screen avoidance, I’ve still got some great links (and videos) for you this week. Enjoy!