Issue 207
Feb 20, 2024

Let Runway automate all the busywork around releases so that you can fully focus on building features, and avoid constant fastlane rabbit holes. Mobile releases don’t have to rely on a rickety, duct-taped processes. With Runway, releases are so smooth you barely have to think of them at all. Learn more.

This month’s SwiftLee Giveaway allows you to win one of the five copies of The Mobile System Design book, authored by Tjeerd in ’t Veen.

I must admit I’m not often using inout parameters, but Daniel Saidi shows an interesting use case and made me more aware of the possibilities this feature brings.

You’re running async tasks using async/await, but do you know whether they run on the main thread or not? Donny Wals explains how to find out.

An important message shared by Holly Boria this week: will Swift 6 require you to be familiar with Swift concurrency from the start? If you want to read more about this topic, I recommend reading this article by Matt Massicotte.

How well does Apple handle accessibility on the Apple Vision Pro? zmknox has low vision and bought a Vision Pro at launch. He’s sharing how well this new product works for him.

There’s a lot to learn in this article by Alex Ozun. He covers type-driven code, a non-empty-array type that’s common in languages like Haskell, and an inspiring set of code examples that could help you level up your code safety.

This week’s question comes from Hans:

It’s a common question asked, and it makes sense for developers to wonder: Swift keeps getting new features, keywords, and functionalities. 

I’ve given several talks over the last year, covering Macros, Opaque types, existential any, and generics. All quite complicated topics, but they have one thing in common: you’re not required to use them.

I think it’s key to understand that Swift offers many ways to write complex solutions, but there are often alternative solutions that use the basic features of Swift. You might end up with more duplicate code, but that’s worth the tradeoff if you’re unfamiliar with the latest features.

I’m also sure many of the features are for specific cases. For example, Macros will likely be developed inside SDKs or distributed via open-source repositories. For a regular app project, there’s no need to write custom Macros.