WWDC is over for another year, and it leaves a lot of opportunities, a lot of improvements, a lot of session videos still to watch, and a lot of work to do. All this change and enhancement is really exciting, I’m enjoying diving in to what it means for developers and our apps.
I’m really pleased with the direction of the iOS platforms, moving towards closer integration between iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. The improvements to multitasking and keyboards will make our devices even more useful with iOS 9. First party deep linking, app search, and personalisation all look like they are implemented to be useful and respectful of the users privacy.
Swift took centre stage, and really looks mature enough that there’s no excuse not to start learning it now, certainly that seems to be a consensus among the iOS engineers at work. In the session videos that I’ve seen there has been barely a line of Objective C shown on stage; I really didn’t expect that level of adoption in principle from across Apple so quickly. Objective C will still be the most useful language on a professional level for iOS and Mac development, but only because it’s not worth rewriting existing apps in Swift wholesale. It looks like Swift will be ready to use in a client’s app much earlier than I would have predicted last year, and Swift 2.0 seems like a great time to climb aboard that train.
I’ve still got several weeks worth of videos to watch, but here are some recommendations from what I’ve seen so far:
- Optimizing Your App for Multitasking on iPad in iOS 9 - Goes into just the right level of detail on what risks the new multitasking capabilities pose for your app, and has some really fantastic memory management advice to help mitigate those risks.
- UI Testing in Xcode - UI testing as a first class citizen in Xcode, with a side of improving accessibility in your app. Automated tests give so much peace of mind and speed up changes dramatically, the time investment is well worth it.
- Protocol-Oriented Programming in Swift - Widely touted as the best session of the week, I can say it lives up to the hype. Working with protocols rather than inheiritance is always satisfying, and Swifts capabilities in this regard are a key feature of the language now.
What a fantastic year - I really hope I can go next time. For now though, I’m off to watch some more videos!