SwiftLeeds 2024, Day 2

It's that time of year again!
SwiftLeeds 2024 is here, and in this post, i'll be sharing my thoughts on the second (and last) day of the conference.

Agenda:

• The Roast of your App's Design - Hidde van der Ploeg.
• From Quantum to Code: A Teacher's Journey into Mobile Development - Chloe Jenner.
• Cut costs, not corners - Master modularization with SPM - Antonio Markotić.
• The Art of Functional State Management - Araks Avoyan.
• Fixing Image Performance for The Worst iPhone - Aviel Gross.
• Scalable Continuous Integration for iOS - Alberto De Bortoli.
• What Not to Do: Rocky Road to Banner View - Maria Kharybina.
• Refactoring Fear - Josh Holtz.

The Roast of your App's Design - Hidde van der Ploeg

Hidde shared his insights on how to improve your app's design by roasting it.

Key Takeaways:

• Make sure your app is accessible to everyone.
• Make sure your app is usable by everyone.
• Don't make your app too complex, it should be easy to navigate in.
• If you don’t know typography, don’t do custom fonts.
• Make use of the system colors and their options (.secondary, .tertiary, .quaternary, .quinary).
• Use ContentUnavailableView when there is no content to show.
• When apps have great navigation, it's often unnoticed because people can focus on the content and experience.
• Look at the Human Interface Guidelines for inspiration and guidance.
• Explore navigation design in iOS and HIG: Navigation.

From Quantum to Code: A Teacher's Journey into Mobile Development - Chloe Jenner

Chloe discussed her transition from quantum physics to mobile development in a poetic and inspiring talk.
This talk was a great reminder that it's never too late to change careers and pursue your passion.
View the talk on YouTube.

Cut costs, not corners - Master modularization with SPM - Antonio Markotić

Antonio talked about the benefits of modularization with Swift Package Manager.

Key Takeaways:

• Modularization can help you reduce build times and dependencies.
• Modularization can help you cut costs on CI/CD.

Modularized iOS app

The Art of Functional State Management - Araks Avoyan

Araks shared her expertise on functional state management in iOS apps.

Key features of Functional programming

• Immutability.
  we don't directly change our data. We create a new copy of the data with the changes we want to make. This makes our code more predictable and easier to reason about.
• Combine.
  Combine is Apple's framework for reactive programming. It allows us to work with asynchronous data streams in a declarative way.
  Cons of combine: unpredictable future from apple (async, await, Swift 6).

Fixing Image Performance for The Worst iPhone - Aviel Gross

Aviel discussed strategies for improving image performance on older iPhone models.

Key Takeaways:

• It can be tricky to load a large number of images in a performant way on older devices.
• Sometimes it is better to use a framework like Nuke or Kingfisher instead of relying on SwiftUI's built-in image loading.
• It can be smart to (pre)load blurred images first and then replace them with the full resolution image.

Scalable Continuous Integration for iOS - Alberto De Bortoli

Alberto shared his insights on building scalable continuous integration pipelines for iOS projects.
Key Takeaways:

• There is no one-size-fits-all solution for continuous integration.
• You can also host your own CI server on a Mac (mini).
• Using Terraform you can easily deploy more CI's when needed on AWS.

What Not to Do: Rocky Road to Banner View - Maria Kharybina

Maria discussed the challenges she faced while implementing a banner view in an iOS app.

Key Takeaways:

• What NOT to do:
  • ignore advantages of chosen framework.
  • start looking for solution before defining a problem
  • only solve the current problem
  • change the requirements for the component as you go
  • forget about testing
• What to do:
  • think before coding
  • spend more time on assessment and planning
  • share your wins and fails with the community

Refactoring Fear - Josh Holtz

Josh shared his experiences with his stutter and how it has affected his life and career.
This talk was a great reminder that everyone has their own struggles and that it's important to be kind to yourself and others.

Wrapping Up

That's a wrap for day 2 of SwiftLeeds 2024!

Read more

• Implementing Admob in SwiftUI • 7 minutes reading time.
• async/await • 6 minutes reading time.
• self, Self, and Self.self in Swift • 3 minutes reading time.

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