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!