Issue 159 – November 13th 2018

News

Swift Community Awards

If you haven’t seen it already, @twostraws is once again organising the Swift Community Awards, a celebration of everything that makes the Swift community so vibrant. I’m honoured that Swift Developments has once again been short-listed in the ‘Best Newsletter’ category, something that wouldn’t be possible without you all reading each week so it’s a BIG thank you from me for all your ongoing support! Outside this though the list that Paul has pulled together is definitely worth checking out as it highlights some of the best the community has to offer. For example, the ‘Most Inspiring Presentation’ category is (I think) new this year, includes some great talks and a couple that I hadn’t seen before (despite trawling the internet for links each week!) so go take a look – explore – and maybe, like me, you’ll discover something new! hackingwithswift.com

Business

How I Doubled App Store Impressions

Optimising your app store listing can have a big impact on the number of impressions your app gets and this in turn tends to lead to a corresponding increase in organic app downloads. @appsbyjohn has recently been through this optimisation process himself and presents a 5 step process for tackling things. medium.com

Swift

Language Server Protocol

Back inIssue 156 I linked to post on the Swift Forums discussing Apple’s adoption of the Language Server Protocol for future Swift tooling. Following on from this @mattt has written a excellent article looking at the problem the Language Server Protocol is trying to solve as well as the long-term implications it may have for the ecosystem as a whole. nshipster.com

String’s ABI and UTF-8

Talking of what’s coming up in the future of Swift, this week @ilseman has been discussing some of the up-coming changes to the Swift String’s ABI in Swift 5 including some potential performance enhancements and a consistent foundation for future APIs. swift.org

Code

Supporting External Displays

With the recent announcement of the iPad Pro and it’s new USB-C 3.1 connector, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up for directly connecting your iPad to an external monitor. @jordanmorgan10 has been looking at what’s involve and as you’ll see, the APIs are actually more familiar that you might think… swiftjectivec.com

Avoiding Race Conditions in Swift

This weeks article from @johnsundell takes a look at the issue of race conditions and how, using the power of Grand Central Dispatch, you can ensure that your multi-threaded, asynchronous code remains thread-safe. swiftbysundell.com

Tools

Sherlock

@getsherlockapp is a new tool from Samuel Stone and Jack Lawson. Connect your running iPhone app in the simulator and Sherlock starts monitoring your views and provides you with the ability to adjust them in real-time – no re-compile required – giving unparalleled options for experimentation. The app is still in beta but I’ve been playing with it a little over the last few days and so far it’s great. inspiredcode.io

Libraries

App Store Connect API Adoption with Use Case Examples

Following last weeks release of the new App Store Connect APIs, @twannl has been quick to get to work, filling in some of the details of the new APIs and making a start on a new Swift SDK for interfacing with these end-points. One to keep an eye on. avanderlee.com

Server-Side Swift

Server-side Swift: Making Canopy

In this, the first in a 6-part series, @mxcl dives into the world of server-side Swift, detailing some of his experiences with getting up to speed, why Swift is such a great language for using server-side and some of the sticking-points he’s experienced along the way. I’ll be this series with interest. medium.com

Testing

Testing Your RxSwift Code

Writing reactive apps using RxSwift is a fundamentally different way of approaching your iOS development. but it also means a different approach to how you *test* your code as well. In this article @freak4pc provides a gentle introduction to testing your Observable streams. raywenderlich.com

Videos

Learn Talks

One of the things we’re blessed with in the Apple development community is a wide range of high-quality conference and meet-up videos. Instead of hunting for them at different locations around the web @onmyway133 has put together a new site ‘Learn Talks’, that brings many of them together in one place and as an added bonus it’s got an RSS feed as well! learntalks.com