The iOS Huddle #3
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
The iOS Huddle is our monthly roundup of the best links shared in the Black Pixel iOS team’s Slack channel.
From Around the Watercooler
Time for Swift 3
In case you missed it, Xcode 8.2 will be the last version to support Swift 2.3. If you have been waiting to transition to Swift 3, now is the perfect time. Thanks to Ayaka Nonaka for alerting us to this stark reality.
Safer Segues in Swift
Stringly typed APIs have led to countless headdesk bugs over the years and still lurk in places like Storyboard Segue identifiers. Matt Mathias has a great breakdown on how to utilize Swift enums and protocol extensions to make using string identifiers much safer.
Xcode Run Script Build Phase Debugging
If you have ever tried to run a custom build phase script then you probably know that it’s really hard to debug what is broken if the script doesn’t work. It turns out it’s possible to echo custom warning and error messages from scripts to track down the problems.
“Good Taste” Coding Requirement
Clean code is something we all strive for as we perfect our craft. Linus Torvalds has some strong opinions on using “good taste” when writing code and Brian Barto gives an example of how he applied this in practice.
OAUTH 2.0 Hack
Security researchers recently discovered a flaw that allows malicious users to hack the OAuth 2.0 APIs from Facebook, Google, and Sina. Find out about how the attack is perpetrated and how it can affect app security.
NYT360Video
The New York Times open sourced its awesome library for supporting 360 degree video. Check out how to use it to support spherical video in your apps.
Regex Challenge
As if regex wasn’t hard enough to understand, what if you wanted to create regex that only matched itself? We discovered that this is actually possible, though no less mind blowing.
The Neural Network Zoo
With all of the buzz about AI and machine learning, it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments in the field. The Asimov Institute has a thorough neural network guide to help navigate this complex web of deep learning architectures.
Apps We Dig
PaintCode 3
PaintCode makes it easy to generate code directly from your drawings. PaintCode 3 adds support for Swift 3.0 and Swift 2.3, and it’s fully compatible with Xcode 8, iOS 10, and macOS Sierra. Say goodbye to PNGs and hello to vector drawing.
Rocket
We use Slack to stay in close communication throughout the day and are avid users of reactions and emojis. Thanks to Matthew Palmer, you can now have Slack-style emoji everywhere on your Mac with Rocket.
Setapp
The folks at MacPaw have created Setapp which aims to be the Netflix of macOS apps. For $9.99 per month you can get unlimited access to dozens of curated apps. It’s an intriguing business model, and it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. The Next Web elaborates on how the process works and what to expect.
Dash
In a peculiar turn of events, the popular developer documentation browsing app Dash was pulled from the App Store, and its developer account was terminated. But fear not, our docset-loving friends. Dash has been open sourced, so you can build and install it yourself with reckless abandon.
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