Arek Holko

Fetching and Observing a Single Object in Core Data

I know what you're thinking after reading the title. Is Core Data really THAT complicated to need a whole article about working with a single managed object? Well, it sure looks so if you want to do it well.

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Will We See Android-Like Instant Apps on iOS?

A couple of days ago, at its I/O conference, Google introduced Android Instant Apps. Long story short, we'll be able to use an app without installing it first. In Google's example, tapping on a link to BuzzfeedVideo opens, after a short loading time, the native app instead of a website. To me (and not only me!) this feels like magic future.

There's a good demo of this in the video below.

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Xcode Search: the Hidden Gems

As software developers, we spend a surprisingly large amount of time reading code. Robert C. Martin points this out in Clean Code:

Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code.

Reading through the whole codebase is just not practical. When you join a new project, browse through some open source library or just work on a large codebase, search becomes an immensely useful part of your toolkit. So, let's dive in into some hidden 💎 of Xcode's Find Navigator.

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Improve Your Self-Improvement

There's a good chance you work a 40-hour job. That leaves you with roughly 70 hours (excluding sleep) of free time a week. But does it, really?

Can you do absolutely nothing outside of 9-5 and expect to have a good job 1, 5 or 20 years from now? I don't think so. The question is then, how to best approach long-term self-improvement?

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Storyboards and Their (Better) Alternatives

Originally published on Macoscope's Blog.

It seems that in almost every iOS project, one of the first questions developers ask themselves is:

Should we use storyboards, XIBs or write the whole UI in code?

It's always hard to answer it because preferences tend to vary even among members of the most closely-knit teams. However, enforcing a consistent approach to the way UI flow is handled within an app almost always results in higher quality of the project.

Every decision of this magnitude requires the team to take a closer look at the pros and cons (or tradeoffs 🙅) of all available solutions. This article discusses the majority of the known (and popular) ways of dealing with UI flow management to help you choose the one that fits your or your team's goals the best.

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