Blogs on miqu.me

My top 5 must-have technical books

Sun, 28 Jan 2018 19:06:09 +0000

Quite recently a team member wanted to suggest interesting technical books to read for a junior engineer. I figured I might as well write my top 5 books here, in no particular order. I believe every Software Engineer should own these books, but reading them is a very good start ;)

Fixing autocompletion on mixed Objective-C and Swift projects

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 23:55:27 +0100

This year I had the privilege of attending WWDC for the first time. I knew the labs were very important, and I want to share a resolution to fix a problem for our big project at Peak: Autocompletion on Swift code was not working most of the time in the IDE, and with the help of an Apple engineer in the labs we got it sorted.

Update on 30/10/2017:

The issues described here seem to be fixed with latest release version of Xcode 9.0.1 (9A1004). Also the ‘internal’ menu doesn’t seem to be accessible anymore. If you know how to access it I’d love to hear from you!

Automatic bridging from Swift to Objective-C using Sourcery

Sun, 21 May 2017 22:30:00 +0100

I recently read a great post by Benjamin Encz about bridging Swift to Objective-C by creating bridging types that can be exposed to the older language. I wondered if his idea can be improved and automated using meta-programming with Sourcery by Krzystof Zablocki. The answer is a very impressive ObjC-like uppercase YES.

Build settings depending on Xcode version

Sun, 29 Jan 2017 23:26:54 +0000

This weekend I wanted to setup Precompiled Bridging Headers for my project. This setting is available in the new Xcode 8.3 beta. Then building for latest official XCode (8.2.1) the code will not compile because the Swift compiler doesn’t recognize it. How do we use different build settings for different Xcode versions? Only possible with xcconfig files.

There’s an undocumented build setting called XCODE_VERSION_MINOR that we can use here. And after some variable substitution we’ll make it work. Here’s the gist:

Reducing the pain of git bisect with Xcode

Sun, 22 Jan 2017 11:49:01 +0000

There’s times when you need to investigate regressions in your project, and you don’t know have any clue as why something is happening. Git bisect is the best tool for this cases, but it can be painful to use in non small projects using CocoaPods and Xcode. I want to share what I’ve been doing to ease the pain.

App extensions, Xcode and Cocoapods, OMG!

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 09:44:54 +0000

Have you encountered this error when upgrading to the latest CocoaPods (1.1.0), or sharing a library between your iOS App and your extension?

'sharedApplication' is unavailable: not available on iOS (App Extension) - Use view controller based solutions where appropriate instead.

If yes, continue reading, as you might have encountered same issue as myself. I’ve recently had to upgrade a project to using Cocoapods 1.1.0. Things stopped compiling, and I had to investigate the root cause of the problem. It has to do with iOS App extensions, unavailable APIs and how fragile our tooling is ;).

Easy localization management with Google spreadsheets

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 16:50:18 +0000

Last thursday I gave a talk at NSLondon meetup called ‘Minimum Viable Tooling’. The topic was examples of approaching tooling and automation for small teams. I showed real examples of what we do at Peak, where I currently work. One of the things people showed interest in after the talk was how we deal with localizations.

In this post I will replicate the simple solution from scratch, so you can follow along and get started with your own projects. And we will be using Swift for the scripting, just because we can!

Controlling time in the app

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 19:38:37 +0100

Today I want to share a small utility we’ve been using for a while at Peak, my current workplace, to control the system time inside the application and save time while testing or debugging.

Knowing when to delete code

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 21:04:04 +0100

Much of the literature and writing related to sofware development focuses on the creation, new ideas, fresh ideas and things to improve in your next project. But when is it a good moment to delete the old stuff in an long term project? Here’s my short rant about this; I recently deleted a chunk of code in my current project and just felt I wanted to write my thoughts.

Xcode 8: New build settings and analyzer improvements

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 21:50:16 +0100

I always like to check the new build settings and analyzer improvements of every Xcode release. And this year’s main release includes a couple of goodies. Let’s check them out!

Dear SDK developer

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 12:50:32 +0100

As an application developer I get to use many third party code to integrate it into my current project. I want to share a checklist of things a user of an SDK really appreciates.

Xcode 7.3 analyzer improvements

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 20:39:53 +0000

The latest xcode beta is available for downloading. There are many improvements, and the usual problems with stuff that stops working… Ah the love of Apple for it’s developers :). But I want to tell you about a feature that caught my attention: New analyzer settings!

New analyzer settings

From the release notes:

The static analyzer warns when nil is returned from a method or function with a nonnull return type or is passed to a parameter marked nonnull.

Transitioning iOS versions

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 20:00:25 +0000

Having worked in companies developing their own products, I’ve faced many times the problem developers encounter when building iOS applications: Your biggest 3rd party dependency - the OS SDK - is changing under you every year. How does your team deal with this in a maintainable way?

Building Swift on OSX

Sat, 05 Dec 2015 00:38:35 +0000

Swift is finally open source! This is great because of many reasons, namely the transparency and chances to learn from the people responsible of building the foundational language you work on. I’ve been checking how easy was to build the runtime, REPL and compiler, and it turns out the team made an excellent job to make the process very easy. Let’s see how to do it.

Three months with XVim

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 22:19:24 +0000

‘Know your key shortcuts’ is the mantra of the productive programmer. I’ve chosen to try using the same keybindings everywhere, investing time and learning Vim. And using xvim in Xcode. In this article I’m going to try to explain why I did this, and I’ll share my experience of the process.

Jumping into existing codebases

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 18:55:18 +0000

I’ve recently changed workplace - we’re hiring! - and I’ve jumped into an existing codebase. This is a good time to review what I like to do when I start to work on a project in these circumstances.

Functional programming in the small, with Swift

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 16:00:23 +0100

In a previous post, I wrote about the choice of paradigms that Swift presents for it’s target audience. I also gave my opinion on how people with different backgrounds might see and approach the Functional Programming paradigm.

In this post I want to share how I started to take advantage of FP with Swift for the practical domain of iOS developers: Building apps.

Poor man's functional programming

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 21:00:00 +0100

It’s a very exciting time to be an iOS or Mac developer. The platform moves very fast and we got a new toy (language) to play with: Swift. It’s the perfect time to reevaluate, learn and evolve as a programmer, because you will be forced to adopt this new language (yes, I think Swift is the future, 100%).

I want to relate this to the fact that most iOS engineers, or mobile application developers, are traditionally familiar with Object Oriented Programming paradigm. But Swift offers more than different syntax and OOP.

I’m referring to some features inspired by functional languages. If you’ve ever had an interest, but never the chance or motivation to go forth and look into this paradigm, now it’s the perfect time to do it.

Freehand Drawing

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 21:09:40 +0100

Yesterday my last post on the series ‘Let’s build Freehand Drawing for iOS’ has been published at Badoo Tech blog. It’s been a very good experience for me, and of course I recommend you visit the tutorials if you are interested.

I divided the tutorials in 3 parts:

Part 1: Introduces the feature and a naive implementation
Part 2: Adds undo functionality, refactoring along the way
Part 3: Improves stroke to make it look smoother

Building tutorials is hard

This series has been my first take on writing technical tutorials. And I must say that it’s a lot harder than I thought. You need to keep track of the content, code correctness, and the pace of the articles so it’s readable and understandable. Coding while writing an article is challenging, but the experience has been very gratifying.

One commit a day

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 21:22:22 +0100

One commit a day. A lesson I’ve learned the hard way when dealing with long-term side projects.

Adopting Objective-C generics

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 22:53:14 +0100

This year in WWDC, Apple introduced Objective-C ‘lightweight’ generics for XCode7. This builds upon the improvements to Objective-C to document the code and improve the interoperability with Swift. I wrote previously about nullability annotations and I continue to be delighted by these changes to the language. Here’s what I think.

Fragmentation

Wed, 27 May 2015 15:16:50 +0100

As an iOS developer or Apple-centric developer, WWDC is a time of excitement and news. The yearly event at Apple offers many networking opportunities, but most importantly sets the stage for the next year of development in the company’s platform. As this year event is closing in, I wanted to write my thoughts on a related, and often overlooked topic; fragmentation

Adopting nullability annotations

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 23:39:03 +0100

Apple introduced nullability annotations to Objective-C compiler from XCode 6.3. I was really surprised by this change, and welcomed it with open arms when I saw the release notes. My first thought was: Objective-C is learning from Swift! I want to share my 2 cents on this new annotation and what it means for more modern Objective-C code.

exFat with Raspberry Pi (continued)

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 22:35:50 +0100

I wrote a while ago a tip, mostly for my future reference, how to set up a HDD with Raspberry Pi formatted using exFat. After more intensive testing on my Samba setup, I’ve decided to go back to NTFS as my format of choice.

Code signing and distributing - Swift

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 11:45:12 +0000

Having problems code signing and distributing your application written in Swift? I’ve encountered some, found solutions for them, and I’ve written a sum up for Badoo Tech blog.

Hopefully it will help anybody with similar issues and increase discoverability of the solutions.

Swift Animations

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 20:00:14 +0000

Today I introduce a small Swift DSL to improve how complex and chained animation code looks, and reads.

Code injection: Continued

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 17:33:30 +0000

I’ve recently done a short talk @Badoo about code injection. Summarized and gave a demo of my previous blog post.

Check it out if you are interested. Feedback on the talk is more than welcome, contact me

Tip: ExFat HDD with Raspberry Pi

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:11:11 +0000

A few days ago I switched my HDD on my Raspberry Pi to a SSD drive. I use the Pi as a NAS serving files at home and I wanted to use a HDD for music with less storage but more reliability. This drive runs 24/7. I also chose exFat for the filesystem. I write this as a future self-reference, but may be useful for somebody else, so here it goes.

A tale of categories and extensions

Sat, 20 Dec 2014 21:37:17 +0000

I’ve gradually been changing my code style favouring (Obj-C) categories and (Swift) extensions a lot more. I’ve been inspired by my other lover (Ruby). Why? Readability and code organisation.

Travis + octopress = Yay!

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 22:45:25 +0000

I just finished setting up Travis CI integration with this blog. So now I don’t even need to do rake generate_deploy. Just git push to source and deploy after 3 mins. Happiness.

I based my config on Hari Menon’s post.

My small contribution to whoever happens to read this post is: Don’t forget to set up your user.name and user.email in Travis CI. Check my final travis.yml if you are curious.

Happy coding!

iOS Code Injection

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 12:21:36 +0000

Write code, compile, wait, navigate to screen in application. Fix problem, recompile wait. Oh it was not fixed, start again… Does it sound familiar? For compiled languages there seems to be no workaround this bottleneck. Even though this is true, there are situations where we can reduce the waiting time, increasing our productivity and happiness. Enter code injection.

Technical fanatism

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 15:21:07 +0100

Whenever I meet some developer, I can always get a really interesting conversation. Be it tools, opinions on platforms, favorite blogs, books, or some new technique I didn’t know about.
That’s why it’s important to discuss with other people in the field their opinions, they challenge your assumptions and you can gain useful insights which otherwise would be hidden to you for longer. But sometimes, you hit a wall. Somebody does not listen.

Continuously improving with your tools

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 13:17:49 +0100

Have you ever setup your tools in half an hour? In my opinion, the key to improving your tools is gradually evolving what you use, and how you use them. Here’s what I think about it.

Apple watch: love it and hate it

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 22:35:04 +0100

Let me confess: I always loved smart watches. I am a geek and I like gadgets, I love to see new features ‘just because they are cool’. I own a Pebble watch and I love it, and I most probably will buy Apple Watch. But I think Apple did not solve the main issue with today’s mobile technology, and Smart watches in particular.

Hello WWWorld

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 21:26:06 +0100

Hi there!

Welcome to my technical blog! I may write here from time to time. My intention is to write about technical stuff, mainly programming and iOS.