I ran my first 4-hour workshop yesterday

It’s been a long time in the making but yesterday was the first out of two runs of my Core Data workshop. I’m hosting the workshop together with Jeroen from AppForce1, and it was awesome. I really had a good time and based on the feedback we’ve received, the attendees had a good time too. And more importantly, they got everything they hoped for in this workshop.

What more could I ask for, right!?

I had never done a 4-hour workshop before, and I can tell you it’s exhausting but extremely rewarding. I’m already looking forward to doing it again next week.

As i was winding down from the workshop, and as I was getting ready for bed yesterday something terrible happened that snapped my right out of the workshop high.

I dropped my phone.

On the bathroom floor.

And as the phone hit the floor I know what had happened. Or at least, I though I knew.

I fully expected the back-panel of my precious iPhone XS to be shattered. Unfortunately, when I checked the screen it had three bright lines that stretched all the way from the top of the device to the bottom. Two green lines, one purple line. The timing couldn’t be worse considering we’re pretty much 5-6 months away from a new phone announcement but repairing this device would be too costly in my opinion.

So I ordered a Graphite iPhone 12 Pro that I picked up from the Apple store a few hours ago. It’s an amazing device and it really softens the sadness from ruining my XS. The XS’ camera still works fine so I’ll probably use it as my webcam from now on through the Camo Studio app.

Anyway, have a good weekend folks! I’m going to have some with that awesome new camera in the 12 Pro.

Cheers, 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.

By the end of the book, you'll know exactly how you can start using Core Data in modern applications.

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.

🎶 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.

+44 - When Your Heart Stops Beating Yes, it’s old. But it’s also really good. If you know Blink-182, love Mark Hoppus’ singing and Travis Barker’s drumming, then this band is right up your alley. Just give this album a listen and you’ll know what I mean. Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Music

Other content that I really want to share with you

What’s the difference between a singleton and a shared instance in Swift?

Sometimes we use a specific term and the term covers the load of what we want to say just fine even though it’s technically not exactly what we say it is. I often see people refer to (what I call) shared objects as Singletons even though they don’t stricly follow the Singleton design pattern. In this short post I explain the differences (and similarities) so you’ll never mix these up again. But if you do end up mixing things up every once in a while, that’s fine too.

An article by Donny Wals

Dear Xcode...

You might now Krzysztof as the creator of the amazingly useful tool Sourcery. It’s an absolute must-use tool if you want to do some meta programming for your Swift codebase. Recently he has related a new tool called Sourcery Pro which is, as he calls it “The most powerful Xcode extension that exists” and I agree with him. In this post, Krzysztof explains some of the hurdles he had to overcome to finish his extension, and how Apple could improve the extension experience. So let’s hope Apple is paying attention and listens to Krzysztof’s commentary.

An article by Krzysztof Zabłocki