I've been writing here since 2010 and have published numerous articles during that time. While they all have value (at least to me), some stand out more than others for various reasons. I thought I'd collate them into a list and share those with you here 😁.
- Keep Downloading with a Background Session
- Noteworthy because it takes an existing concept built using GCD and ports it across to using Swift Concurrency. It proved to be tricky and forced me to rethink my mental model of data management in a similar way that SwiftUI forces you to rethink how to build UIs.
- Progressive Core Data Migrations
- Noteworthy because I always absolutely hated that with each new version of a schema in Core Data, I had to effectively throw away my old migration paths. Coming up with this solution was a real "breathe out" moment, and I knew it would prove helpful to others.
- Sneaky Date Formatters Exposing More Than You Think
- Noteworthy because it was the first time I really understood the dangers of shared mutable state. That understanding drove a lot of further reading on how to be a better developer, beyond the "I can make an app fast with very few bugs" mindset I had had until then.
- SwiftLint Easing Conflict
- Noteworthy because I had moved to a new team that was an absolute trainwreck for interpersonal conflict between the team members. I used the technique discussed in this post (and many not discussed) to bridge some of those differences and get the team to do their fucking job of developing a product rather than squabbling all the time. The issues with that team (and the wider company) forced me to improve both as a communicator and manager.
- Ghost Typing Your Way to Hollywood
- Noteworthy because it's just an enjoyable project to work on.
- Treat Interviewing as Storytelling
- Noteworthy because I've wasted too much time in really poor interviews that felt more like pop quizzes than a session to get to know me. I wanted to demonstrate that it could be better for both parties by simply adjusting the mindset we (the interviewer) brought to the interview.
- Reducing Coalescing NSOperations
- Noteworthy because it represented another big growth moment for me as a developer.
- Networking with NSOperation as Your Wingman
- Noteworthy because it was my first real post that wasn't just a notepad for a little code snippet with some explaining text.
- How to Win Over a Unit Testing Sceptic
- Noteworthy because back when iOS was the new kid on the block, the idea of writing unit tests offended most iOS developers I worked with. In this post, I describe real-world points that I raised in conversations to try to persuade people that banking (yes, this really happened) did need some form of automated testing.
- BVA and EP Partnership
- Noteworthy because it was the first post that I wrote, and I can still remember the thrill of pressing "Publish".