Swift & the Objective-C Runtime
Even when written without a single line of Objective-C code, every Swift app executes inside the Objective-C runtime, opening up a world of dynamic dispatch and associated runtime manipulation. To be...
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IBInspectable / IBDesignable
Show, don’t tell. Seeing is believing. A picture is worth a thousand emails words. Whatever the cliché, replacing an interface that requires us to memorize and type with one we can see and manipulate...
View ArticleSwift 1.2
Swift, true to its name, is moving fast. This week marks the beta release of Swift 1.2, a major update to the language. The Swift team has responded to so many of the community’s requests in one fell...
View ArticleSwift Collection Protocols
Swift has a well-designed and expansive suite of built-in collection types. Beyond Array, Dictionary, and the brand new Set types, the standard library provides slices, lazy collections, repeated...
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NSScanner
Strings are a ubiquitous and diverse part of our computing lives. They comprise emails and essays, poems and novels—and indeed, every article on nshipster.com, the configuration files that shape the...
View ArticleNSCalendar Additions
Dates. More than any other data type, the gulf between the initial banality of dates and their true, multifaceted complexity looms terrifyingly large. Combining sub-second precision, overlapping units,...
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Quick Look Debugging
Debugging can be an exercise in irony. We create programs that tell our pint-sized supercomputers to complete infinitely varied and incalculable tasks on our behalf, yet when trying to understand those...
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Unmanaged
APIs do more than just exposing functionality to developers. They also communicate values about how the API should be used and why. This communication is what makes naming things one of the Hard Parts...
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Swift Documentation
Code structure and organization is a matter of pride for developers. Clear and consistent code signifies clear and consistent thought. Even though the compiler lacks a discerning palate when it comes...
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XCPlayground
Stop right there! Given the topic, wouldn’t you rather read this article as a Playground? Download Now →Play.Given the association of play with childish exuberance, one could define play as the...
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MirrorType
Reflection in Swift is a limited affair, providing read-only access to a subset of type metadata. While far from the rich array of run-time hackery familiar to seasoned Objective-C developers, Swift’s...
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NSHipster Quiz #7
On June 9th, we organized the third annual WWDC edition of the NSHipster Pub Quiz, with topics ranging from pop cultural trivia to technical pedantry. A huge thanks to Realm, who opened their offices...
View ArticleiOS 9
WWDC 2015 may not have packed quite as many fireworks as its predecessor, but neither was it short on the new and shiny. The introduction of watchOS 2, including a revamped WatchKit, access to the...
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CloudKit
As an iOS developer, if you want to make an application on your own, you sometimes need to write back-end code. Even for the developer who can take that on, there is more than just the code, there’s...
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UIKeyCommand
Adding a new feature to a product is always a tradeoff. Will the added utility of a new feature be enough to offset the added complexity? Shortcuts would seem to side-step this issue—after all, they’re...
View Articleguard & defer
“We should do (as wise programmers aware of our limitations) our utmost best to … make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in time) as trivial...
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Reader Submissions - New Year's 2016
With 2015 behind us and the new year begun, it’s time again for an NSHipster tradition: reader submissions! As inyear’spast, this installment is chock full of tips and tricks that can help ease your...
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UITextChecker
Make no mistake, a tiny keyboard on a slab of glass doesn’t always lend itself to perfect typing. Whether for accuracy or hilarity, anyone typing on an iOS device notices when autocorrect steps in to...
View ArticleNSHipster Quiz #8
This year’s WWDC edition of the NSHipster Pub Quiz was held on June 14th, once again testing the assembled developers with questions both random and obscure. We’re enormously grateful to Realm, who...
View ArticleNSRegularExpression
“Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use NSRegularExpression.’ Now they have three problems.” Regular expressions fill a controversial role in the programming world. Some...
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