A special last day

I’m typing this newsletter on a very special day. It’s my last day at Disney Streaming, and I went to the office to turn in my laptop, badge, keys, and all that at the end of the day.

Just like anything in the past year and a half, this last day isn’t like any other last day at work I’ve experienced.

Normally, a last day for me is a day where you’re kind of having a good time with your (soon to be ex-)coworkers, have some drinks afterwards, and really just make it a bit of a special day. It’s your last one after all.

Today, I’m all by myself. I got a few very nice Slack messages about this being my last day and my coworkers made me an awesome digital going-away card with all kind of really nice greetings on it.

Other than that, today is a day just like any other.

One of the coworkers I’ve befriended decided to come to the office for a couple of hours so we could have some coffee, talk, and have lunch together. He did have to leave after that, but it was very nice that he joined me for a bit to make this day a little bit special.

All in all, last days are bittersweet no matter what they look like. I’m sad to be leaving so many nice coworkers, and a company that I enjoyed working for for the past thee and a half years. At the same time, I’m super excited about what I’ll do next, both as freelance work, and for my books and blogs. This will be a whole new adventure and I’m excited to get it going.

To new beginnings!

Donny


Practical Core Data

Practical Core Data helps you learn Apple's Core Data framework without requiring any prior knowledge. You'll learn how to integrate Core Data in UIKit and SwiftUI applications. The book also covers data modeling, synchronizing your store with a custom backend or CloudKit, profiling and improving performance in a Core Data app, and using Core Data in unit tests.

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Practical Combine

Practical Combine is a book that will help you learn Combine from scratch. You will learn about all aspects of Combine in a natural flow where you're eased into functional reactive programming with simple examples, and the difficulty gradually builds up to complicated integrations in later chapters.

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🎶 Currently on repeat 🎶

If you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I play guitar. I'm a huge music lover and want to share this with you. In this section I will share a new album that I've been enjoying a lot every week.

Capstan - SEPARATE

I’m not quite sure how I’d describe this band’s sound but I like it. I stumbled upon them by accident and apparently they’re working on a new album so I’ll be keeping an eye out for that.


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Swift Concurrency looks amazing and I can’t wait to dig in deeper after I’ve read all of the proposals. Now that I’ve watched all videos on the topic, the porposals make a lot more sense to me, and it’s nice how they go even more in depth than the WWDC videos did. One of the features I’m excited about is Actors, in this blog post I explain why.

An article by Donny Wals

If you haven’t managed to get started on watching WWDC content yet and you’re not sure where to start, this post is for you. Keith does a great job of guiding you through his ultimate WWDC viewing path.

An article by Keith Harrison

iOS 15 comes with tons of cool new features. One interesting new future is an Apple-provided button that help you obtain a user’s lcoation once. I feel like this button will make it much easier for apps to get a user’s currently location by reducing friction since your user can now allow you to get their location once with little to no effort. And the best part is that, as Filip shows in this post, that’s it super simple to get started with this button in your app.

An article by Filip Nemecek