WWDC21 first impressions
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 to unpack, but I think is alraedy a good point to sit down a bit and reflect.
As a general sentiment I don’t think this has been a WWDC with a lot of new and revolutionary things. It for sure seems like a year of refined, and that’s welcomed! That said the more sessions I watch the more little nuggets I find that are a big deal. Check out my raw session notes to keep up with that.
First, let me talk about the first impressions I had after the keynote and the SOTU. All that matters at that point is if you got what you were wishing ^^
As expected the more revolutioanry thing this year it’s Swift Concurrency. As I said, this was not new, thanks to Swift Evolution I already knew it was coming and spent the recent weeks fully focused on that. I learned a lot, made videos about it and tried many things. I definetly feel like I was ready for it. What is very fun is to see the rest of the community being so excited about it!
It feels like I can finally share with everybody an awesome toy that I’ve been playing with for a while. ❤️
It’s not with a mix feeling if I’m honest. Now that Apple has done official documentation and amazing sessions, is inevitable that my content will become obsolete. Especially when every other content creator will be focusing on that topic. But it’s also true that I don’t mind very much (a little, yes, for sure) because I do share my knoweldge because I love doing it! I love making those videos explaining technical details that probably nobody else cares about. That’s my jam!
We didn’t see any System Themes like on Android. It would have been a huge change for iOS so I’m not surprised it’s nto here this year.
What is a bit more unfortunate is to not have a Core Data replacement. I know this is not very likely since Core Data is battle tested and ditching it entirely would be a mistake, but some improvements to make it feel right at home in Swift are really needed. Anyway, in the wishlist for next year ^^
We got Xcode CI! That’s a positive one. Although I’m still hesitent about its utility and scared about Apple monopolising this sector with their strict rules. Right now the CI industry for mac is kinda screwed, and that just affects developers like us. We’ll see how this develops. But not only that, the new Xcode has many cool new features! Although I still wish they ditched the project file.
SwiftUI has tons of very welcomed improvements (see my raw session notes for a list). I’m very excited for the new possibilities and to get used to the refinements very quickly! Sadly there is still no guidance on navigation architecture. And every year that passes it becomes more and more necessary. With the amount of system technologies taht rely on deep linking into your app it feels like Apple is droping the ball here.
So besides the CI I don’t think any other wish has been granted ^^’
Let’s keep a list for next year!