Weekly digest - 2018.14

Weekly digest - 2018.14

This week started with article saying that 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows. After lack of new Mac Pro and disappointing MacBook Pro it's nice to hear that Apple listened started collaborating with professionals.

Also SpaceX reaches the promised land of launching every two weeks. Which is really significant, because SpaceX achieved something that was pursued for decades. It is actually nice to see, what privately funded company is able to achieve without government bureaucracy.

Fortnite on iOS made $15 million in its first three weeks in the App Store
Fortnite is great game, but those numbers are shocking. Especially if we take into consideration the fact that paid content contains only silly costumes, in-game dance animations, and other cosmetic items. This is good example how you can sell DLCs that does not affect the game and still make a profit.

Here is list of interesting articles.

Parallel programming with Swift: Promises
Parallel programming in Swift is hard. As we're still waiting for new solution built into the language, here is one based on Promises.

Advanced debugging with Xcode
Here you will find a couple of tips that will make debugging in Xcode easier.

UIAccessorizedTextField
Short, but useful post showing how to utilize a UIAccessorizedTextField class to implement the "suggestions" functionality.

We Are Netflix Podcast
This is new podcast from Netflix developers. First episode is about how their iOS app was made.

Microservices — From Idea To Starting Line
Michael explains how to reasonably approach a microservice architecture.

Vue CLI 3 — the deep dive
Another week and another article about Vue CLI 3.

Here are examples of everything new in ECMAScript 2016, 2017, and 2018
Java Script is evolving really fast. If you are behind, this article will help to catch up.


Image credits: Pascal Eggert.

Weekly digest - 2018.13

Weekly digest - 2018.13

The world is still dealing with Facebook’s scandal. This time people are even more concern because Facebook probably knows about us more than we thought. One thing is sure, this incident changed people's perception of data privacy.

Earlier this week Apple hold an education event in Chicago. This event was all about Apple's approach to education.
After watching this event I have mixed feeling. Apple claims to "reinvent" the eduction, but this approach won't change anything. Unfortunately, once again, it looks like Apple's ability to change the world died together with Steve Jobs.

And now it's time for my list of interesting articles.

Vue CLI 3: A Game Changer For Frontend Development
Vue CLI 3 is going to change the way we bootstrap Vue.js applications. This article explains why.

git log – the Good Parts
Lets face it, GUI Git clients are awesome, especially when it comes to analyzing the repository history. From this post you will learn how to do it from old plain terminal.

Progressive Web Apps on iOS are here
With iOS 11.3 we can run PWA on Apple phones and tablets. From this article you will learn what is possible to do, and what are the limitations comparing to native apps and PWA on Android.

Progressive Web Apps: Bridging the gap between web and mobile apps
If you don't know what PWA is this article is for you.

One hour of side project coding a day - UPDATE #1
Andy explains how to spend just an hour a day and finish mini side projects.

Swift 4.1 Released!
Newest version of the language is finally here.


Image credits: Apple.

Weekly digest - 2018.12

Weekly digest - 2018.12

This week was mostly about Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. Long story short, Cambridge had copies of private data for about 50 million Facebook users. Cambridge supposed to delete that data in 2015. What is even more interesting the Cambridge Analytica was involved in Donald Trump's presidential campaign which could influence the outcome of presidential election.
One thing is sure, Facebook will have to explain why Cambridge Analytica still had access to users data and how much Facebook actually care about user privacy.

On the bright side, the GDC 2018 took place. It is mostly about sessions, but we got a few cool technical demonstrations like Real-Time Ray Tracing Star Wars Demo or digital human performances from Siren and Andy Serkins.

Also Apple fixed buggy iPhone X ad before fixing the actual iOS 11 bug. This perfectly shows current mindset of Apple - lets fix the glitch in the ad instead of actual bug.

And finally, here is the list of interesting articles.

Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
This is really interesting paper about how Windows 95 user interface evolved and came to life. I must admit i felt nostalgic after reading it.

The most powerful tips to help you get a remote job
If you are a remote worker or you want to become one then this article is for you.

A complete introduction to Apollo, the GraphQL toolkit
GraphQL is getting more and more popular. And it looks like, it is just the matter of time that it will become more popular than REST. This article explains the basics, so if you never used GraphQL or Apollo before, you should check this out.

iOS Subscriptions are Hard
Jacob explains how to properly implement subscription mechanism in iOS app.

How to make a poster for Avengers: Infinity War in HTML and CSS
This is tutorial explains how to create cool looking website using just HTML and CSS.

The secret world of NSTimer
Nice explanation of inner workings of NSTimer.


Image credits: Facebook.

Weekly digest - 2018.06

Weekly digest - 2018.06

Finally, after years of designing and building, SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy into space. The world's most powerful rocket took the Starman in a red Tesla in space while twin boosters landed near the launch site in Florida giving us unforgettable spectacle.
Although the mission achieved its primary goal - putting a cargo on its way to Mars, it wasn't fully successful. While the two side boosters landed simultaneously on the ground, the core one crashed into the ocean. At the moment, it looks like the booster was approaching the landing barge too fast and missed it by couple meters.
Despite this malfunction, we are one step closer from landing on Mars.

Lucasfilm released teaser trailer for upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story. Despite all the fuss with switching directors in the middle of production, the movie seems to be good and interesting.

And now it's time for the list of interesting things I stumble upon this week.

Apple's Emoji Crackdown
Apple started rejecting iOS apps that use emojis in different places than text fields. I understand that Apple does own the copyright to its emoji font, but rejecting creative and good looking apps because they use emoji instead of normal words is the way to make developers go away from the platform.

Swift 4.1 improves Codable with keyDecodingStrategy
Swift came a long and bumpy road. I still remember how hard it was to parse JSON when Swift came out in 2014. In this article Paul Hadson give us a glimpse into the future and explains how easy it will be to parse JSON with Swift 4.1.

CloudKit: Structured Storage for Mobile Applications
This white paper gives the behind the scenes look into Apple's CloudKit.

PodsUpdater
Every iOS developer must heard of CocoaPods. Those who use it know that managing dependencies is difficult. This app makes our life a little bit easier.

Building .NET Core 2.0 web apps with Vue.js single file components using VS Code
Adam Marczak shows how to integrate Vue.js with Asp.NET Core 2.0


Image credits: SpaceX.

Weekly digest - 2018.05

Weekly digest - 2018.05

In this week we mostly lived by Elon Musk's Not a Flamethrowers that were sold out withing 48 hours.

Intel presented the roadmap of how they play to fix the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in the silicon chips.
Speaking of Spectre. Newest Windows patch allows to disable the Spectre microcode
fix.

Also after couple years of development, the Boostrap 4 has been finally released.

Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things I stumble upon this week.

2018 Developer Skills Report
HackerRank compiled a report on developer skills. There are some great insights, including: what are the developer's favorite languages and frameworks, how they get new skills, what developers want in a job.

Google doesn’t necessarily need innovation
This is follow up to the Why I left Google article.

How I review code
Code review is a controversial topic. We all should be doing it, but sometimes we
don't. There is a lot of reasons why - most common cause are deadlines, but sometimes we don't feel comfortable with it. This article explains how to do a human friendly review.

Parallel programming with Swift: Operations
Jan Olbrich explains basics of concurrency and parallel programing in Swift.

A better way to update UICollectionView data in Swift with diff framework
Dynamic content in UITableViews and UICollectionViews is quite difficult to achieve. This article explains how to do it properly.

How to get HTTPS working on your local development environment in 5 minute
Most of the websites are protected by HTTPS. If yours is not, it should be! From this article you will learn how to setup HTTPS on your local machine.

An introduction to Progressive Web Apps
Progressive Web Apps are the latest trend in mobile application development using web technologies. Flavio Copes explains the basics behind this concept.

Concepts
Concepts is sketching and design app for iOS. I don't have any drawing skills, but this app looks really impressive from UX point of view.


Image credits: Boring Company.