Unlocking Mixins with Swift 5.9 Macros June 12, 2023
It's been a while since the last time I thought about traits and mixins in Swift, but the WWDC23 presentations about macros brought a lot of memories from those times...
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WWDC23 notes June 9, 2023
WWDC23 is over and as previous year I'm sharing my unedited notes from all the sessions I've watched.This year has been quite entertaining as the main focus has been on...
Non-nominal types workaround for domain modeling March 9, 2023
One of the many things I love about working with The Composable Architecture is how it encourages the developer to focus on domain modeling. I think that properly designing the...
An exploration of FormatStyle as a Dependency January 20, 2023
Buckle up. This is an adventurer journal while exploring what's the best way of exposing the new style of formatting APIs in Foundation. We will walk through the paths of...
On the new Point-Free swift-dependencies library January 10, 2023
The folks at Point-Free have given us yet again a new tool to improve our Swift development: swift-dependencies, see their announcement. Let me show the journey I've been for the...
Why you should care about the future of Memory Ownership in Swift January 9, 2023
I've been very excited about memory ownership improvements to come to Swift, and now that they seem to materialize, I needed to share it with you. Specially because I feel...
Limit Swift Concurrency's cooperative pool December 30, 2022
One of the nice things about Swift Concurrency is its cooperative thread pool. When writting concurrent code you should not think about threads but is still good to know how...
GitHub Action to create new posts December 20, 2022
Now that I have this site building on Netlify I wanted to start writing more far away from my computer. Of course I immediatly found a bit more friction that...
Generating this site with Netlify and GitHub Actions December 18, 2022
With the whole move to Mastodon, I’ve been thinking a lot about owning my content again and what will happen with all the interesting things I’ve written on Twitter. That’s...
Image aspectRatio without frames December 13, 2022
Today I spent a couple of hours understanding how SwiftUI aspectRatio modifiers works and how it interacts with Image. It's a surprisingly simple system, but also one that made me...
Extend a footer outside the Safe Area with SwiftUI September 30, 2022
The safe area is one of the most relevant changes in the UI paradigm of iOS in the recent years. Let's learn how to implement a footer with CTA that respects the safe areas but with a background that extends to the edge.
Fluent syntax extensions in Swift January 5, 2022
In the early days of Swift, one thing I really enjoyed was the focus on properties (bye-bye ivars!) and the unification of stored and computed property syntax. It became very...
Unwrap Or Throw (or Die) January 4, 2022
Swift's Optional type is one of the biggest hits of the language. Mainly because it's opt-in. Everything is non-optional by default, which solves the old problem of having to deal...
Experimenting with a Query Resolver System January 2, 2022
Sometimes some topic gets in my head and doesn't leave until I've gone far enough to satisfy my curiosity. Usually this ends up with me spending days writing some code...
Building a Channel with Swift Concurrency Continuations December 25, 2021
Following Structured Concurrency was one of the best decisions Swift could have made when introducing concurrency into the language. The impact of that decision on all the code written with...
iOS App Architecture in 2022 December 15, 2021
Since we're about to start a new year, I thought it would be good to write about what I think it's the best approach for building iOS apps nowadays.For the...
Observe actions in The Composable Architecture December 3, 2021
One of the beautiful things about Pointfree's Composable Architecture is how you can start using it on a smaller part of your app. It makes it very easy to improve...
Swift's default literal types December 2, 2021
Today I want to show you a rather obscure feature of Swift. You will learn a bit about Swift's type system, type inference and other nice powers that the language...
The Matrix in SwiftUI November 20, 2021
Today I want to share a weekend experiment where I built the classic Matrix effect in SwiftUI. It all started after seeing this tweet of the effect implemented in Compose....
The importance of cooperative cancellation June 13, 2021
One of the most important aspects to understand about Swift Concurrency is how cancellation of async tasks works. You may expect that when a task is cancelled, it immediately stops,...
Make a Swift Package Collection with your favorites June 10, 2021
WWDC21 has brought many cool things and there is one that will facilitate a lot the creation of new projects with dependencies. Until now it was a bit of a...
SwiftUI and Structured Concurrency June 9, 2021
We're just in the week of WWDC and it's clear that Swift's Concurrency it's the biggest topic that will change how we develop. I've been following its evolution for months...
WWDC21 first impressions June 9, 2021
And here we are again! A new year, a new WWDC! I'm writting this after the first day of video sessions so there is still a bunch of cool things...
WWDC21 notes June 9, 2021
As last year I decided to share my unedited notes from the sessions I'm watching. The difference is that this time I've focued more on the topics and not on...
Swift Concurrency Videos May 25, 2021
Swift is about to get its Concurrency features. Their development is going very well, with many proposals actively reviewed and a lot of the work already available in recent snapshots....
SwiftUI read preference helper March 22, 2021
SwiftUI's layout system is very nice to get started with. Combining stacks and modifiers you can get very far very quickly, but at some point you will need to pass...
Better Dictionary literals with Result Builders March 9, 2021
Swift is well known for its lean syntax that helps newcomers understand the code relatively quickly. But it's also a language with advanced and powerful features. Sometimes this makes part...
Apple's SwiftUI tutorial series March 7, 2021
When Apple released its own SwiftUI tutorial I decided to give it a try. This was not a simple tutorial introducing the basics of SwiftUI, but a more overarching training...
GraphQL and modeling domains February 25, 2021
I've been a big fan of what Apollo is doing for a while, and recently they have been doing various interesting talks and interviews. In this post I want to...
Publish step to generate social images for your posts January 22, 2021
In this post I want to show you a little behind the curtain. As you may have noticed if you follow me on Twitter, recently the tweets with links to...
ViewBuilder vs. AnyView January 17, 2021
One of the major benefits of SwiftUI is its amazing DSL. A feature that not only makes it nice to read but also makes it possible to use the type...
SwiftUI views to images January 9, 2021
SwiftUI is an amazing tool to create all sorts of views in our applications. But many times we want that ease of use to generate graphics that can be used...
How to update SwiftLint December 24, 2020
Having a good process to update your tools is very important, specially for those that affect directly your code. I've talked about how I update swiftformat and this post will...
How do I update swiftformat December 20, 2020
Talking about how one updates a tool may seem a bit nonsensical, after all, what dificutlies can you have when updating a tool? Well, you would be surprised! But no,...
Runeterra Wallpapers Downloader tool released November 26, 2020
Legends of Runeterra has become one of my favourite games. I started playing it since the beta was available and haven't stopped since. It caught me by surprise, but it's...
Swift's Optional equitability October 27, 2020
Optional equitability is one of those aspects of Swift that seems simple at a first glance but that makes you stop and think twice when you encounter it in actual...
How to capture a reference that doesn't exist yet October 19, 2020
Sometimes when writing Swift code you want to reference an instance before its creation. It's not a very common, which is why I'm writing this post so I can easily...
The Dogma of Mocks and Protocols August 4, 2020
This post is a personal opinionated piece around unit testing and the dogmas of our industry. Be sure to come here with an open mind and respectul toughts. I will...
GoodProgress has been released July 25, 2020
My birthday is the middle of July, seven days from now, which has always made me consider summer as the division between years. That mentality was reaffirmed when as a...
Home Screen Quick Actions with the Composable Architecture July 5, 2020
iOS offers the ability for applications to add quick actions to the home screen icons. Implementing this feature often requires things that are not easy to access in most common...
WWDC20 session notes June 24, 2020
WWDC week is here and with it the usual post with all my notes about the sessions.This year I've changed the format and I will keep the notes grouped by...
WWDC 20 day two, enjoying the new session format June 23, 2020
After having absorbed the keynote and SotU the wait for the sessions started. But with patience, and thanks to the constant flow of time, California o'clock arrived and, after a...
WWDC20 day one, getting ready for the week ahead June 22, 2020
WWDC Monday finished! And what an evening! For the first time I was able to stay awake to watch the SotU live and it was great ^^ The problem is...
Shared SwiftUI previews for prototyping June 15, 2020
The introduction of SwiftUI and previews changed completely my process of developing applications. Having such an easy way of quickly prototyping UI ideas affected the rest of my process. But...
WWDC 2020 wishes June 1, 2020
It's that time of the year again! WWDC 2020 is around the corner. As every year around this time I start thinking about my wishes for this version of WWDC...
Swift where clause in generic contexts May 15, 2020
Swift type system is quite powerful and the where clause is a very important part of how developers interface with it. This keyword allows developers to constraint code to a...
Synthesized Comparable conformance for enums May 12, 2020
Swift 5.3 comes with a nice addition for enums: it will synthesize the required implementation to conform to the Comparable protocol. This reduces a lot the boilerplate needed to make...
SwiftUI macOS color picker May 4, 2020
A couple of weekends ago I was reading my Twitter timeline and I, don't know how, ended up in this old tweet."This isn't a Louie Mantia color."(That means it isn't...
PointFree Composable Architecture showcase May 3, 2020
PointFree has released a library with their Composable Architecture and I've been showing it a little bit on livestreams and videos. This page wants to serve as an index and...
Protocol extensions and subclasses April 29, 2020
Protocol extensions are one of the most powerful features in Swift, but they also come with a bit of danger. In this post I will explore how this feature interacts...
New website redesign, v3 with Publish April 22, 2020
Welcome to alejandromp3. As you may have noticed this website has a totally new design! Not only that, but is now using a different static site generator purely in Swift!This...
Debugging superpowers with FLEX April 18, 2020
I’ve been using FLEX for years and I just realised the little I’ve done to promote this great tool among the iOS community. So here is my attempt at giving...
Make a Publish Theme with SASS April 9, 2020
Publish's Foundation theme is a very nice starter, but at some point you will want to accommodate it to your needs. When you start touching the CSS you will quickly...
Live reload HTML while developing with Publish April 7, 2020
While developing the new version of my website with Publish I had the necessity of have live reloading of the page while developing. I'm happy with the solution I've found...
Running Danger on GitHub Actions March 27, 2020
In the past I've written about the setup I typically use with Danger. It worked quite well given the limitations but there was always the annoying restriction that to update...
Road to Swift 6 video February 12, 2020
I shared a very special video on my Following Swift Evolution video series the other day, Road to Swift 6! I think it's an important moment to look at what...
GitHub Actions for your Swift Package January 11, 2020
With the release Xcode 11 is now easier than ever before to work with the Swift Package manager. If I enjoyed making CLI tools with Swift before, now it's a...
SwiftUI, list with indices without enumerated January 4, 2020
One of the common things we want to display with SwiftUI are lists of our models. The basics of it are pretty easy, you just need to use a ForEach...
Tips to successfully remove code and assets August 19, 2019
This week I removed a big chunk of code from our app, an entire section/feature. I've been working on this codebase for years and I had the opportunity to do...
Improving SwiftUI modal presentation API June 24, 2019
SwiftUI has some presentation modifiers to display alerts, sheets and full screen views. On one hand, presenting an alert is nice and easy, it feels really well designed. But on...
SwiftUI reusable Button style June 22, 2019
In my previous post about SwiftUI buttons I described a technique to reuse button configuration with a ViewModifier. Now that beta 2 is out, we finally have the proper tools...
SwiftUI TupleView and equally spaced stacks June 13, 2019
Yesterday I shared with you a post where I was trying to understand SwiftUI's layout system in order to implement equally spaced distribution for views inside stacks.I was able to...
Trying to understand custom layouts in SwiftUI June 12, 2019
One of the things that I still don't fully understand about SwiftUI is how to customise the layout of views.HStack and VStack are fine for the majority of cases, but...
Playing with SwiftUI Buttons June 11, 2019
The abstractions on SwiftUI are so composable that customising the UI it's basically an intrinsic property of the framework. Let's take a quick look at some things you can do...
First days with SwiftUI June 10, 2019
WWDC'19 has been great and I'm obviously hyper excited about SwiftUI but if there is one thing that I like more than watching a great announcement is watching great video...
Apple listens to the community June 9, 2019
After all the game changing announcements on the WWDC one of the words that is used a lot is "finally!". We're excited and happy that Apple as finally given us...
WWDC'19 marks the start of a new era June 8, 2019
WWDC '19 is over, and what a week! Let me start by saying that this is probably the best WWDC ever. We have seen the announcement of game changing technologies...
WWDC 2019 wishes May 28, 2019
Is that time of the year again 🎉 WWDC '19 is happening next week and as usual we all have our expectations, wishes and predictions.I have to admit that this...
BearTodo, a menubar app to manage your tasks May 22, 2019
After writing about my perfect notes app and comparing the available options I decided to move to Bear. My tasks from Todoist were one of the first things that I...
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization a talk by Jonathan Blow May 19, 2019
I'm so thankful to have people like Jonathan Blow that is able to challenge the status quo of our industry. Software quality is decaying and we're part of the problem....
Swift script to export lists from Reminders.app May 8, 2019
I've already mentioned how I moved tasks from Todoist to Bear but one of the missing pieces of the migration was some lists that I had on Reminders.These lists were...
Property Delegates and the diligent community April 25, 2019
The Property Delegates proposal has been in review for some days by now and is a good example of the strength of the Swift community.This is a feature that many...
Implementing using in Swift with SwiftSyntax April 22, 2019
Last year I wrote about Improving struct composition in Swift by levering the using keyword and feature taken from Jai. Recently I've been inspired by pointfree to implement this feature...
The fiasco of configuration objects April 20, 2019
There is this commonly followed programming rule that says that parameter lists must be short.Nobody wants to see a constructor with more than 2 arguments right?Right?Well, let me tell you...
Using protocols to associate types April 10, 2019
Today I've used Protocols to make a generic function only accept a certain number of types. The interesting part is that the only thing the protocol has is an associatedtype,...
Safe string example, Safe XML and URL April 7, 2019
After finalising the InterpolableLanguage protocol in the third part of this series we will finally put it to good use and show an example of this can be used on...
Generalising Swift string interpolation April 6, 2019
In the first article of this series we made a safe string type that was safe to use but with a cumbersome API, and on the second article we made...
Making String safe with interpolation March 24, 2019
In the previous article we made a safe string type that was safe to use but with a cumbersome API. In this part we will use new Swift 5 interpolation...
Solving the String problem with Swift 5 March 17, 2019
The String problem is something that I've explored before, in my 2015 post Solving the Strings Problem in Swift. The solution back then was far from ideal as Swift was...
Swift Collection's prefix for quick tests March 16, 2019
This is a small trick that I use when I'm writing a script in Swift that performs some operation in a large number of objects, usually files. More often than...
Move your tasks From Todoist To Bear February 17, 2019
After having clear the requirements for a notes system and comparing different options I decided to give an honest try to Bear. Now, one of the first things I need...
It's six.sh O'Clock February 10, 2019
After a long day of hard work I endup having many apps open. Xcode, Visual Studio Code, Simulators, the terminal... when it's six o'clock I want to close everything work...
Speed up your PRs by splitting Danger in two February 7, 2019
At the iOS team at Lifeworks we've been using Danger since its inception. We care about the etiquette of our PRs and the more that can be automated the better.I...
A RunLoop for your Swift script January 19, 2019
In the past few days the Swift community has been awoken again with the promise of a better way of using Swift for scripting, all thanks to swift-sh.I made a...
A successful game developer, a game for Blackthornprod GAME JAM #1 October 27, 2018
Last week I participated in the first Blackthornprod GAME JAM. I had so much fun creating a small game involving some mechanics that I wanted to explore for a while.The...
Must watch NSSpain 2018 talks October 4, 2018
Everyone knows that NSSpain is one of my favourite conferences but sadly this year I haven't been able to assist. Luckily for me the recordings are already up so I...
Tales of updating to Gatsby 2.0 September 30, 2018
I haven't been doing much maintenance to this website since I migrated to GatsbyJS, but recently Gatsby has announced its 2nd major release. This is a big step forward for...
GroupBy with KeyPath in Swift 4 August 24, 2018
One of the best things of modern Swift is the introduction of KeyPath. It allows us to reference getters and setters as first class values in our code. With them...
Swift 4.2 CaseIterable enums and UISegmentedControl, a practical example August 18, 2018
On 2014 I wrote a post about how to drive a UISegmentedControl with the new powerful Swift enums. Back then the major complain was that to get all the cases...
Making a script to automate creating posts for GatsbyJS August 8, 2018
One small inconvenience of a static blog generator running without a CMS is that to create a new post in markdown you need to add manually the front matter in...
Programming the Cloud with Pulumi and Typescript August 4, 2018
Server side development and the managing of the infrastructure has gone a long way in the recent years. From scalable virtual machines easy to manage to containerisation with Docker and...
Netlify deployment with Siri July 20, 2018
In previous posts I described my setup with Netlify for automatic deployment and even how to receive push notifications when a deployment succeeds. Today I bring you an alternative to...
Netlify and IFTTT, push notifications on deployment July 16, 2018
After the setup of this new website with Netlify I lost a little the perception of when the website was up to date. Before I had to run the build...
The community decides what becomes oficial July 13, 2018
I was reading the Rust forums when I saw this post talking about an oficial Rust error crate. It reminded me about the discussions in the Swift forums about making...
Using Netlify for static site hosting and deployment July 9, 2018
On every new iteration of my website I'm always happy to have taken the decision of using a static site generator instead of a big and fat CMS. This gives...
My experience with GatsbyJS and modern web development July 1, 2018
As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm Rebuilding my website with GatsbyJS. At the moment of writing this the migration is pretty much done. I spend the morning setting...
Rebuilding my website with GatsbyJS June 16, 2018
This days, between watching WWDC sessions, I'm undergoing the renewal of this my personal website and blog.For the past 3 years this website has been running in a Digital Ocean...
WWDC 18 session notes June 10, 2018
As every year after WWDC is time to sit down and watch the videos of the sessions! I wrote last year about How I watch the WWDC videos and this...
WWDC 18 expectations and review June 8, 2018
One thing that I always want to do is talk about WWDC before and after it happens. I used to do it when my podcast was active but without it...
Swift Forums embraces the community May 11, 2018
Today I woke up to receive great news for the Swift community. The Swift Forums now have a new section to talk about some community projects!On the post that I...
Google IO, Android Jetpack and Architecture components May 10, 2018
This past week Google did their annual developers conference. I rarely watch the main keynote because I'm not that interested in their products but nonetheless I always keep an eye...
Make is great and it shouldn't exist April 4, 2018
Make is one of those tools that I've always been curious about but never had a good change to try it until a couple of years ago. It is a...
Testing an RxSwift operator with TestScheduler March 10, 2018
RxTesting makes testing a custom Rx operator an enjoyable experience. Being able to fake time simplifies a lot the develpemnt of reactive code and helps on building confidence in the...
How flatMapLatest cancels an API request February 28, 2018
How flatMapLatest cancels an API request? This is a common question that people has when they start learning about Rx. Specially since RxSwift has an example of this in the...
Processing and p5 in Swift February 20, 2018
p5.js and the rest of Processing projects are an amazing way of making coding more accessible to everyone, allowing creative people to make interactive applications with ease and teachers to...
Lox Swift interpreter finished February 11, 2018
One year ago I decided to start working on a Lox interpreter in Swift following Bob Nystrom's book Crafting Interpreters. Today I'm happy to say that the work has been...
Improving Swift struct composition, inspired by Jai February 3, 2018
Today I was reading Composing types in Swift which showcases the different ways of composing the different types in Swift: structs, classes and enums. Is a good read, specially if...
Hole Driven Development in Swift January 30, 2018
While programming with a static type system there are times when you write the definition of a function but you still don’t have any idea on how to implement it.func...
Jonathan Blow's libraries discussion January 27, 2018
This post is just a dump of the things that came to mind while watching Jonathan Blow's libraries discussion. I'm not an expert on any of this but I find...
New Swift forums and wishes for 2018 January 23, 2018
Swift forums are live! This is a great change that many of us have been waiting for a long time and that marks a new era for the Swift community....
LambdaCast examples of functional programming in Swift January 16, 2018
I recently discovered the podcast LambdaCast, a really interesting podcast about functional programming with hosts that are at different points on the path to functional programming. This gives an interesting...
Creating a Swift package with SPM January 13, 2018
Watch how I create and publish a library with Swift Package Manager for the first time!With the help of the command line tool is pretty easy. After creating a folder...
HealthKit privacy radar January 11, 2018
Today I had to create a new radar for Apple in relation to HealthKit privacy descriptions.When you integrate HealthKit into your App you need to add some privacy descriptions in...
Advent of Code 2017 January 5, 2018
I discovered the Advent of Code from some retweet on the first days of December. I found them really interesting and original so I decided to give them a try....
Idiomatic Kotlin, in Swift December 18, 2017
In this post I'm gonna explore the talk Idiomatic Kotlin by Dimitry Jemerov. I'm gonna do it by showing how each of the topics the author talks about could be...
Loading translations with NSLocalizedString dynamically at runtime June 24, 2017
One of the best things about developing for iOS is having the power of the amazing frameworks that the Apple platforms have. Foundation is easily one of the best platform...
Time tracking in plain text June 18, 2017
I've been always a big fan of productivity, time is gold. But funny enough, as many other people, we fall into the traps of being productive by just spending more...
The Swift 3 Grand Migration March 10, 2017
Some days ago I finally merged one of the biggest Pull Request our team has seen, the migration of our codebase to Swift 3. I decided to write some words...
Lox, expressions February 18, 2017
The chapter 5 of Crafting Interpreters has been published and after a first read I started writing some Swift code to continue my implementation of the interpreter. Here there are...
Lox interpreter in Swift January 30, 2017
A couple of days ago I was reading Crafting Interpreters written by Bob Nystrom and it awoke my passion for programming languages so I decided to implement an interpreter for...
JIRA reports with Swift January 28, 2017
One of the things I think is really important in any team is to keep track of the performance. Not to use it as ammo to blame individuals but to...
Let If Flow, a talk about FRP October 15, 2016
Yesterday I gave a talk about Functional Reactive Programming to my coworkers at LifeWorks. At first, I wanted to give some insight about it to the Android team, as they...
Swift 3, linked lists and sentinels October 1, 2016
I've always been a big fan of Linked Lists. Maybe is because it was one of the first data structures that I learn how to implement and they were my...
Abusing mocks September 2, 2016
The post Mock yourself, not your tests immediately captured my attention just by saying "I feel like we abuse of them". As I've been having more and more the same...
Let patterns emerge August 25, 2016
Without entering in the dicussion about MVVM I just wanted to quote here an interesting paragraph of the linked post. It's mainly for my own memories, as it's something related...
The trip to modern declarative software August 21, 2016
It's a known fact that in our community there are always a constant discussions about the best patterns to use when building an App. But I find the discussions about...
A quick API layer with GraphQL June 30, 2016
Facebook has brought to the open source world a bunch of amazing technologies, React being one of the more widespread ones. It is really interesting how old ways of doing...
XcodeTopComment, modify or remove the top comment of a file June 25, 2016
One of the things that Apple released on WWDC was the official support for Xcode plugins. Although in a very limited way, is really nice to see Apple opening Xcode...
Xi Editor, the piece of software that hypes me the most June 13, 2016
One of the most interesting parts of software is decoupling. Although not the kind of decoupling that we are all used to in our code, but the kind that decouples...
UIViewController extension for keyboard avoidance, and the missing features of Swift June 10, 2016
Being able to conform to a protocol and automatically have the implementation that you need is really a game changer. Having trait like functionality is one of the most interesting...
Interesting talks in ReactEurope 2016 June 8, 2016
I’m always interested in knowing what is going on in other communities, it helps me a lot to understand how others work and what tools they use. Anyone that knows...
Using closures to simplify June 7, 2016
This is an update to an previous post about using blocks to simplify in Objective-C.Swift makes working with functions much enjoyable simplifying its syntax and, specially, closing the gap between...
Poor man's hot reloading for Swift scripts June 5, 2016
The other day, while I was writing a Swift script, I added an option to make it run continuosly so it could be on a server doing its job without...
It’s a trap! Catch OS signals in Swift. May 29, 2016
In the script that I was recently writing, from where the post “The state of Swift scripting” emerged, I found that when the scrip is interrupted (Ctrl + C in...
The state of Swift scripting, writing the script May 28, 2016
This is the second part of my posts about the sate of scripting with Swift. In the previous post I wrote about what I expect from a language toolset when...
The state of Swift scripting May 27, 2016
In the past few days I’ve spend some time writing a little script in Swift and I thought it was a good time to revisit the state of the Swift...
Matt Gallagher on C-level performance in Swift May 24, 2016
Getting C-level performance in Swift for numerical algorithms is quirky but not particularly difficult. If you limit yourself to value types (no classes or existentials), use unsafe pointers and tuples...
Save web development May 21, 2016
Swift, Rust, Go, and the rest of tomorrow’s languages, can you marry modern thinking, build a community with simple as a core design goal, and save web development from itself?Worth...
Excuses and UX patterns May 20, 2016
I really liked this post about Misused mobile UX patterns. I'm not a UX or UI designer, but after all this time being a user and a developer I feel...
Not Swift by default May 19, 2016
I really recommend reading how Maxim made his FlatBuffer library 10 thousand times faster Swift.The interesting part is when he realized how much faster the C implementation was compared with...
On teaching C May 11, 2016
“Teaching C” is really nice write up on what to teach in a C class. It has been a while since I was a student in University but there are...
Quick and dirty debug timer May 3, 2016
For those occasions when you need to check something some state at regular intervals.Just drop this snippet at the top of your file:static dispatchsourcet timer; void DebugTimer(dispatchblockt block) { dispatchqueuet...
MIR, the new Rust mid-level IR May 2, 2016
Really interesting post about MIR. I really like this kind of posts that the Rust team publishes giving insight into the compiler internals and decisions.If you’re not a compiler enthusiast,...
Tales of my first contribution with Swift on the server April 27, 2016
The other day I had to work with some date formatting on iOS and Android and I end up using the great website. I immediately missed the option to change...
Mike Acton on "Data-Oriented Design and C++" April 26, 2016
That’s the reason why I have to wait 30 seconds for Word to boot.Such an interesting talk. The best part is seeing how a bunch of smart people becomes defensive...
Subjective objectivity April 23, 2016
Good analysis of the rejected Swift proposals by Chris.I can see why, yet still feel the opposite. This is one of those cases where we can hardly say anything objective...
It’s all about meaning April 22, 2016
About elegance in code:​The trick here is, again, all about meaning. We like to pretend that programming is a purely abstract thing, and perhaps some of the ideas are, but...
WindowCapture, screenshot windows with RxSwift January 28, 2016
A while ago I wondered how easy would be to make a screenshot of a window in OS X from another application using some system API. With that idea in...
Release of Survive! The Game of Life January 17, 2016
A couple of months ago I wrote a small prototype of the well known Conway's Game of Life. This kind of simulation has always fascinated me. Giving a set of...
Rust Traits restriction December 28, 2015
From Rust Traits page:There’s one more restriction on implementing traits: either the trait, or the type you’re writing the impl for, must be defined by you. So, we could implement...
Swift Typed Throws compared with Rust December 23, 2015
I was reading about Error Handling in Rust to have a better understanding of the implications of typed throws in Swift (thanks to David for the proposal). At the end...
Functions are Functors December 21, 2015
We are used to treat closures as first class citizens in our code. Same goes to functions as they are interchangeable. But we often don’t think of them as actual...
Some interesting proposals for Swift December 13, 2015
Since Swift was open sourced I've ben scanning trough the mailing lists and there has been some interesting proposals for the future of the language. There are other places were...
Solving the Strings Problem in Swift December 5, 2015
In this post I try to port the type based solution to the strings problem ideas by Tom Moertel to Swift.I started this some days ago as an exercise to...
Sometimes Swift library November 28, 2015
Sometimes is a small Swift library that makes it easy to run code... sometimes. Well, actually, just once.Sometimes.execute(key) { // This will run just once }It was highly inspired by...
Brad Larson on using Swift for robotics November 7, 2015
I’ve been following the linked blog because I’m really interested in the usage of Swift in environments different from the typical Apps. And because using it for robotics seems pretty...
Swift JSON mapping libraries October 28, 2015
Today I had to do a little research on the state of JSON mappers in Swift for a new project. I’ve been using a simple JSON library to help me...
Open-Sourcing as a company culture October 26, 2015
The last post of this blog was inspired by Artsy, and so is this one. I swear I don’t do it in purpose ^^This time I want to link to...
Know what you do, then be pragmatic September 11, 2015
I absolutely recommend you to go and read the linked article. This posts by the Artsy devs are so great for me since I’ve been following closely the development of...
Developers, be considered September 10, 2015
developers have become complacent in being wasteful for the benefit of their own development ease instead of considerate of the time and resources they are taking from customers.Is something that...
Swift Stack for fun September 4, 2015
The other day I had some spare time and I started exploring the idea of a Stack in Swift using protocols. For what? For fun.A Stack is a data structure...
Swift as a good language to learn Software Development September 2, 2015
The author of the linked post gives some reasons on why Swift is a good language for an introduction to computer science class. I’m really interested in Swift being a...
Useless Sprint Reviews August 27, 2015
Emphasis mine:I often see that a sprint review (or sometimes called a demo) consists of the Product owner showing the stories to the team (who already knows them) and to...
Dependency injection without frameworks August 25, 2015
This post is one of those ones that I’ve been wanting to write for a while. It was some days ago when, by coincidence, I was reading a post about...
Photos framework with ReactiveCocoa August 19, 2015
In the last version of BWallpapers I added the ability to save the wallpaper to a specific Wallpaper album in the Photos app.You can use the Photos.framework to do that....
Protocols in Swift, the ongoing discussion August 18, 2015
Protocols in Swift are really powerful thanks to be able to be generic and to protocol extensions. But there is some things that drive us nuts. Mainly the usage of...
Why I prefer Swift over Javascript August 14, 2015
The other day while I was adding the ability to generate the protocol file to my Sketch plugin I took the opportunity to make a couple of changes to the...
Generating an Objective-C color palette from Sketch August 10, 2015
Last week I had to made some changes on the colors of the WorkAngel app. The colors of that app are retrieved through an object called ThemeColor (we have another...
The concepts behind iterating August 9, 2015
I’ve been reading and talking with people that when explaining functions like map, filter or reduce they start with “it loops over the collection and...”. When I ear that my...
Designers should be dynamic August 5, 2015
I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to work in a bunch of different projects in my years as a developer. In all those projects I also had the opportunity...
A better future without web apps August 3, 2015
On the episode 125 of ATP (A Better Future for Everybody) there was an intense talk abut the future of the software and its openness. The talk started as the...
Don’t be afraid of sharing July 22, 2015
I realized that we all should write and share more.Bear with me for a couple of technical paragraphs to explain you the motivation for this post.In my technical community there...
How I watch the WWDC videos June 30, 2015
Yesterday I saw this tweet from Diego talking about how he watches WWDC videos:Por culpa de algunos de vosotros, he vuelto a perpetrar un post en mi blog: "CĂłmo ver los...
GroupBy in Swift 2.0 June 29, 2015
2018/08/23: A new version of this post is available. Using KeyPath to simplify the call site and reduce possible mistakes.A while ago when Swift came out I had the idea...
This is not a Singleton June 28, 2015
From Wikipedia, Singleton in Software Engineering:In software engineering, the singleton pattern is a design pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to one object. This is useful when exactly...
Sam Soffes on Building Functional Apps June 27, 2015
I would like to talk about a video of a great talk that I really recommend. I’m really interested on the topic of sharing code between iOS and Mac because...
The unexpected but convenience case of flatMap in Swift June 24, 2015
Yesterday night I found myself reading this code in GitHub for dictionary in array { - if let interaction = Interaction(dictionary: dictionary) { - interactions.append(interaction) -...
Understanding Swift Protocol Extensions dispatching June 20, 2015
As I said on my Fist impressions on WWDC 2015 I was really excited for finally having traits in Swift, in form of Protocol extensions. After playing with them this...
What I don’t like about the new Swift error handling model June 12, 2015
I mentioned the new Swift error handling in my WWDC first impressions post. And although it’s true that I still have not had the opportunity to use it in a...
First impressions on WWDC 2015 June 9, 2015
Every year, after the WWDC I usually record a podcast episode talking about my feelings of the keynote. This year I've been keeping a list of the things that I...
Casey Muratori, about Object Oriented Programming June 5, 2015
Kind of following the thoughts on the exploration phase post.Casey Muratori says:Don’t ever bother learning or using object-oriented programming. It’s a deeply flawed programming methodology, and I wasted a good...
Exploring Swift generic functions with WallpapersKit May 31, 2015
Today I’ve been updating BingWallpapers to use the last version of Swift and also include the latest changes of WallpapersKit, the framework that is shared across the Mac and iOS...
The exploration phase May 26, 2015
Today I found this great post by Zach Holman. He presents some points that can contribute to make you a better developer. I was reading it with attention cause I...
Swift script to download Youtube videos from Safari Reading List March 28, 2015
When I wrote my srly script I thought on doing it in Swift, but at the end I decided to go with a well known scripting language, Ruby.After Ayaka’s talk...
ScrumVotes March 19, 2015
On March 1st of 2015 I released ScrumVotes in the App Store. It’s an application that helps in the Sprint Planning Meeting when the development team has to give estimates...
Type Systems and Domain Driven Development February 10, 2015
If you like this post I recommend you to read a more recent article about the same topic: Solving the String problem with Swift 5.Some days ago I read this...
Objective-C keeps improving February 9, 2015
Yes, the title is not wrong. Apple just released Xcode 6.3 beta that includes multiple huge improvements to Swift 1.2 solving a lot of concerns that we all had. But...
Octopress 3.0 January 28, 2015
Lately I’ve been working on move my site, again, to Jekyll. Using directly the original Jekyll and keeping my customizations apart from the source I think that I accomplished what...
Should be easier to create Xcode templates January 28, 2015
+10 to this post from Jon Reid.Xcode File and Project templates are full of code and comments that maybe are useful at the beginning but after some experience with the...
Download Youtube videos from the Safari Reading List January 26, 2015
This weekend I wrote a little script that helped me to connect two of the main things that I do everyday: save things into the Safari Reading List and watch...
How to write the perfect pull request... in GitHub January 21, 2015
Great suggestions from GitHub. But the important part is at the end:Our guidelines suit the way we work, and the culture we want to nurture. We hope you find them...
Real world weather into Minecraft January 18, 2015
In the previous post I talked how to connect Minecraft and the Real World. In that case I made my real lamps follow open at the same time as my...
Connecting Minecraft and the Real World™ January 17, 2015
For those who don’t know me I have to say that I’m a big fan of Minecraft (1 and 2). And I’ve always wanted to connect the things that happen...
Documentation in game development January 13, 2015
The other day I was talking about games with my friend Marc and we ended up talking about Don’t Starve, an amazing game. He confess me a little frustration about...
Dotfiles January 4, 2015
I’ve always been fascinated about all the culture behind the dotfiles, those files that people have automated to be installed on a new computer to have everything like they want....
Programming Sucks December 17, 2014
Think it two times before starting a career in programming Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a...
A programming language for Games by Jonathan Blow December 6, 2014
I've just seen this presentation about a prototype of a programing language for games, made by Jonathan Blow (known for Brad and The Witness). I'm really curious about this kind...
The act of programming - The Case for Slow Programming December 4, 2014
The fact that we programmers spend our time jabbing our fingers at keyboards makes it appear that this physical activity is synonymous with programming. But programming is actually the...
The QA goals December 3, 2014
QA is a big part of software development. Whether there is a specific role on the company or it's just some testers trying the builds. In my opinion QA has two...
Bing Wallpapers for iOS November 6, 2014
I'm happy to present my last little app: BWallpapers for iOS. The App is a mobile version of my Mac App BingWallpapers. I've been using the Mac version for a while...
Mike Stern on Hamburger Menus October 20, 2014
Mike is an Apple User Experience Evangelist that talked (here is the transcript of the talk) about the hamburger menu design pattern. I share the same opinion about that and...
Cocoapods haters September 29, 2014
Good words of Orta on Cocoapods haters. Don't like sharing code? Great Telling other people they're idiots for doing so? Not great. Telling people they're idiots for using other...
Programming Sucks September 29, 2014
I could quote here some sentences but the all article is fantastic so go and read it. Now....
Javacript is not so cool after all September 9, 2014
It has been surprising to me how low the usage of UnityScript (a cool name for the Javascript used in Unuity) is, as shown in the official postSeems like some...
Wait for async code in a Swift playground September 8, 2014
By default a Swift playground stops it's execution when the top level function finishes. If you want to run async code you will never see the results. The system doesn't...
Scripting helpers for Swift September 7, 2014
One of the most exciting things in Swift is the possibility to write and run scripts. It turns out that writing scripts is one of the best ways to learn...
I want Headers in Swift September 6, 2014
People say that languages with headers are things from the past, but I still think that they are really useful. As I said before, we don't have to make a...
Let's avoid inheritance! September 5, 2014
Cool article about inheritance and the no so cool things about it. Yes, it is a very cool language feature, and it lets you use the word "polymorphic" when...
Graphical prototyping, a step to the future September 4, 2014
Today I see another prototyping tool. I really don't care about the specific tool o how cool is the application (in fact is pretty similar as Quartz Composer), but the...
Autolayout explained to non developers September 3, 2014
Good article in iMoore about the future of the iOS UIs, but the best part is how it explains autolayout to non developers. Easy. If you imagine the "guides" in...
I'm not the only one that wants traits in Swift September 2, 2014
Matt talks on NSHipster about default protocol implementations. I already said that it's a feature that I miss in Siwft (and in Objective-C). I'd never saw any big talk about...
Understanding Value and Reference Types in Swift August 30, 2014
One of the coolest parts about Swift is how powerful all the types are. Structs are not like basic C structs, they have a lot of similarities with classes, and...
Swift as the next web programming language August 29, 2014
Crhis give us some cool ideas for open source projects in Siwft. A web framework (like Rails or like Sinatra). Some people have already been experimenting in this direction. Since I...
Swift extensions and inheritance August 27, 2014
This is another thing about extensions that I was not expecting. The other day while implementing Jlaner I had some problems with extensions.The problem is that you can't overwrite methods...
Swift protocols are not Objective-C protocols August 26, 2014
For now, the Siwft and Objective-C protocols are two diferent things. The biggest differences is that Swift protocols can have structs and enums and can be adopted by value types.This...
Refactoring — Not on the backlog! | xProgramming.com August 25, 2014
Simples! We take the next feature that we are asked to build, and instead of detouring around all the weeds and bushes, we take the time to clear a path...
AMPActivityIndicator, Cocoapods and Travis CI August 24, 2014
Today I released AMPActivityIndicator. I wrote this little class a year ago and today I made a little clean up and made it available through Cocoapods.It's been very pleasant to...
A Set Type in Swift August 22, 2014
Nate Cook writed afull featured Set Type in Swift. This are the things that I really like about some languages. The ability to extend the language itself with its own tools....
Practical Meta Programming in Ruby August 22, 2014
I really recommend watching this talk. It's about metaprogramming in Ruby but the majority of things are applicable to our loved Objective-C, since both languages take advantage of the Smalltalk...
AutoLayout and Table View Performance August 20, 2014
Jared has writed another amazing post about Autolayout. AutoLayout Myths, Table View Performance, and Side-by-Side iPad App Multi-tasking. After reading it I think that it's not autolayout job to solve...
Oficial answer to Protected acces control in Swift August 20, 2014
The oficial Swift blog is giving us clarifications about Access Control and protected It seems like it's their conscious decision to make an horizontal access control system instead of a vertical...
Dan Ingalls: Object-Oriented Programming August 17, 2014
Really interesting talk about Object-Oriented Programming in a time when I wasn't even born! It´s really amazing how the tools that I use every day were created so many years...
Ship your app weekly August 16, 2014
Shipping frequently helps prevent something I call the “ivory tower syndrome.” I'm a perfectionist. I can spend a lot of time perfecting things that are good enough. A tight...
I love named parameters! August 12, 2014
This is a case of direct translation from Objective-C methods that don’t really look right in swift. The reason this works is swift’s external parameter names, which I think...
Thinking In Terms Of iOS 8 Size Classes by Justin Williams August 8, 2014
Since I use and recommend Interface Builder, my work load is significantly less than those that are still living by the “write everything in code” mantra. If you find...
Swift alternatives to protected August 7, 2014
Yesterday I made a question about the acces controls that we have in Swift: Why internal and no protected? There was not a really good answer in the social networks and...
Why internal and no protected? August 6, 2014
This is a question that I have in my mind since Apple introduced the access modifiers. Why we want internal and not protected? The thing is that when I'm creating or...
Thoughts after knowing Swift August 4, 2014
In these weeks, since Apple has announced his new programming language, I've been trying to learn something about it. As I said before, my approach hasn't been a full change...
Instance Methods are Curried Functions in Swift – Ole Begemann July 29, 2014
So at the end Swift is more functional than we firstly thought :)...
Don't forget Block syntax July 26, 2014
Yes, now we have a cool and simplified clousure syntax with Swift. But it's good not forget the Objective-C block syntax. Here is a little .m that I used a...
inessential: Prefixes Considered Passé July 24, 2014
The good thing is that I've never used prefixes in App code. And I hate category methods with prefixes. Just remember, we are talking about app code, if you are shipping...
Swift enums and UISegmentedControl July 24, 2014
2018/08/18: Swift 4.2 introduces automatic synthesis of enum values. Check out the new version of this post. 2016/09/29: Updated for Swift 3.One of the most cool features in Swift are...
Swift continues changing July 23, 2014
Yesterday Apple released the new beta4 with new changes in the Swift language. The big thing is the new acces control with three acces levels (private, internal and public). This...
The power of clousures in Swift July 22, 2014
I really like when a language gives the power to extend it easily. In Swift the clousures are really powerful. You can use clousures to do lazyness and implement the while...
On Core Data, JSON, libraries... July 15, 2014
After watching a hangout talking about Core Data, JSON an some open source librearies I thought that it will be good to publish a blog post with some personal notes...
There is no later for your customers July 4, 2014
There is no later for your customers. The only thing that matters is what they’re using right now. They don’t give a shit about your roadmap, your brilliant feature...
Visualizing Algorithms June 29, 2014
Don't move the problem away from the server May 30, 2014
LinkedIn has open sourced Isaac, it's library to convert JSON into Objective-C model objects. I think it's a a cool library, although I normally use KZPropertyMapper. But I see a problem,...
Imagining developing for a split-screen iPad – roopc.net May 30, 2014
I don't think that Apple will introduce an split mode in iOS 8, but this article talks about some changes in the Apps development that we should take into account...
Don't touch the spinner on your libraries May 28, 2014
A very good advice and it's not very expanded in the community. Don’t interfere with the spinner in the status bar. Because the way you turn it on and off...
How to make a good bug report May 15, 2014
A good bug report is one that describes the problem well enough that someone familiar with the project can understand and act on that bug report without talking to the...
Unity announces UNET May 12, 2014
Interesting the new direction that Unity is taking. The internal project name for this is UNET which simply stands for Unity Networking. But our vision goes well beyond simple networking....
Using blocks to simplify May 8, 2014
The use of blocks has spread over all Objective-C code. Normally we see them as callbacks (completion blocks) for animations or for async tasks (GCD, another cool kid) but they...
Retiring Shopless from the AppStore April 30, 2014
A sad notice today. I've retired Shopless from the AppStore. The reason is simple: I can't afford the costs of the server that stores and syncs the data.I'm happy with...
BingWallpapers 1.2 April 15, 2014
En esta nueva versión los wallpapers se actualizan en todas las pantallas que estén conectadas al Mac. Recordad que en la versión 1.1 añadà la opción de compartir el wallpaper actual...
How long does it take to make apps nowadays | Kent Nguyen April 9, 2014
In case you are expecting one developer for everything then please stop reading this and go back to your day job instead. Unicorns do exist in some forms but you...