iPS 277: 100 Days of SwiftUI with Paul Hudson

In this episode of The iPhreaks Show the panel interviews well-known author Paul Hudson. Paul is the creator and editor of Hacking with Swift. He does talks all around the world and writes books about swift. Paul went to the recent WWDC and even managed to write a book while at the conference.

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Show Notes

In this episode of The iPhreaks Show the panel interviews well-known author Paul Hudson. Paul is the creator and editor of Hacking with Swift. He does talks all around the world and writes books about swift. Paul went to the recent WWDC and even managed to write a book while at the conference. 
The panel asks him about the conference. Paul explains that he didn’t go to many talks, instead, he uses that time to prepare for the labs. Curious the panel wonders at this strategy for conference attendance. Paul expounds, explaining there are only about 10 minutes of good stuff in a 40-minute talk once you get past the intros, jokes, stories and other filler. He can watch those online. His time is better spent playing with Swift and preparing questions for the labs. 
As for writing a book during the conference, he explains that the body can do amazing things when fueled by caffeine. He also made sure he was in the Marriot where the conference was held, that way he could walk downstairs and know that his swift code was correct. This saved him a ton of time worrying and second-guessing his code. 
The panel considers how SwiftUI has progressed. Paul explains how in the early days it was really hard to tell which features worked as designed. The beta used in the presentations at WWDC is not the beta given to developers, by the time developers get beta 1, Apple is already working on beta 3. He emphasizes the importance of filing your radars early because everything is changing so quickly. Paul goes onto explain that SwiftUI is learning from the mistakes of Swift. Swift had everything but none of it was great. SwiftUI is missing things but what it does have is great. 
Paul has a new program for learning Swift called 100 Days of Swift. For each of the 100 days, Pauls supplies an encouraging and educational article along with a kit. The kit includes chapters to read, videos to watch, tutorials, projects, assessments, and challenges. Paul put a lot of work into creating hours of free content. After SwiftUI was out for a few months he decided to do 100 Days of SwiftUI. His goal with these programs is that by doing these each day for less than an hour, you will graduate by Dec 31st, just in time for the New Year. 
The panel considers the wonderful things about this program and asks Paul about the feedback he has received from it. This program builds and leads to a goal. People are so proud of what they are accomplishing they can share it on social media. Paul works hard every day to make sure everyone feels welcome on his site and in his programs. Every day he finds people on twitter using the 100 Days of Swift hashtag and encourages them with positive feedback. 
Next, the panel discusses the dark corners of iOS 13 where all the new features that people are missing are. Paul explains that there are so many amazing new features in iOS 13 that have been drowned out by SwiftUI. These features include Cryptokit, Imagekit, SF Symbols, Core Haptics, improved core images, quality of life improvements, date-time formatter and many more. He explains a few of the features that he is really excited for and encourages listeners to check out all the features. 
Paul wonders if it is Apple’s plan to get as many developers to adopt iOS 13 with all these exciting new features. The panel considers how the poor documentation problem will hold developers back from adopting iOS 13. With poor documentation and only WWDC presentations to go off of many developers have to go looking to outside sources to learn how to use these tools. 
Considering how the documentation has gone down for years and the fact that Apple is so wealthy, Paul concludes that Apple has to have a greater plan for documentation in works. He predicts that it will be something more interactive to fit the learning trends of the day, bring people to iOS. The panel considers how iOS is becoming less programmerly and how this too may bring more people to iOS. 
Paul goes on a small rant about the chasm between iOS and Mac development. He explains how he is continually nagging whoever he can to see this fixed. Paul believes that the best way to align these to platforms is to bring Swift Playground to Mac. 
The episode ends with Paul explaining his app, Unwrap. Unwrap teaches Swift, it is opensource and free. With it, you learn Swift by earning badges, completing challenges and taking assessments. The panel loves that is open source and fun. Paul explains that this app and his 100 Days of Swift program are not just for beginners, programmers of all levels have told him how much they have learned from these resources.
Panelists
  • Abbey Jackson
  • Evan Stone
  • Jaim Zuber
Guest
  • Paul Hudson
Sponsors
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iPS 277: 100 Days of SwiftUI with Paul Hudson
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