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Another week, another weekly news episode. Extra content around Sam's journey to becoming a paid iOS developer. Great updates from community members like Paul Hudson, John Sundell and Antoine van der Lee. You should try Hindenburg.

• What’s new in Swift 5.4? – Hacking with Swift
• Integrating SwiftUI Bindings and Combine – Rhonabwy
• XCTExpectFailure: Expected test failures explained with code examples
• Creating an iOS bar chart in code using Swift
• Passing methods as SwiftUI view actions | Swift by Sundell
• Navigation in SwiftUI | Sarunw

Donny's monday morning tweet I had to skip this week due to time constraints.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:15 Podcasting goals
• 2:22 Hey there Hindy
• 2:59 What’s new in Swift 5.4?
• 3:22 Integrating SwiftUI Bindings and Combine
• 3:51 XCTExpectFailure: Expected test failures explained with code examples
• 4:19 Creating an iOS bar chart in code using Swift
• 4:55 Passing methods as SwiftUI view actions
• 5:26 Navigation in SwiftUI
• 5:46 Sam's tech interview training
• 9:02 CocoaHeadsNL meetup
• 9:36 Core Data Workshop progress

Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:10

Hi, and welcome to the 17th episode of my app force one podcast. My name is Jeroen Leenarts. And I've been developing software for over eight years iOS apps for over nine years. And I'm running the Dutch Koch hats for over seven. If you're an iOS app developer, you should listen to my podcast because it will keep you updated on interesting articles, conference and events you might not have heard about otherwise. Now take a breath and I will slow down. In this episode, I'm going to talk about what's new in Swift 5.4. Integrating swift UI bindings and combined activity expect failure expected test failures, explained with code examples, creating an iOS bar charts in code using Swift passing methods as swift UI few actions, and Part Four in a series of building lists and navigation in Swift UI. On top of that, Sam will be back in my episode again, and we will share some tips on preparing for your tech interview. If you are searching for an iOS job. cokehead Snell will have another nice meetup this month, a progress update on the Core Data workshop from Donnie Walsh me and I reached my first set of podcasting goals. My initial goals were to reach about 200 downloads for each episode. In the first seven days, get 300 subscribers on Twitter and make sure that I release an episode every week took me 10 days longer than I aim for buts on all three fronts, I was able to achieve my goals. I have some ideas on what my next set of goals should be. But please let me know what you think I should aim for. I have bookings for interview guests all the way into May. I'm still always looking for a great guest to appear on my podcast. So if you know someone or you think you're a nice guest, or a great guest, actually yourself, please reach out to me on Twitter, at Air Force One, the consistent feedback I'm getting from people who listened to my podcast, especially if they've been a guest on my podcast has been the quality of the recordings and the editing, which is kind of surprising to me. Because before October 2020, I have never done any audio editing in my life. And I think most of it is due to the tool choice that I did. I'm using Hindenburg Journalist Pro. And I must say that I was very fortunate that I picked this specific tool to do all my audio editing with, it's very easy to get into. But the amount of power features specific for audio editing voice recordings is pretty much amazing, really. So if you ever look into picking a tool for audio editing, definitely give Hindenburg Journalist pro a try. And the funny thing is they don't even have an affiliate program. So what I just told you is pretty much because I like this tool so much. But I'm on a tangent now. So let's get started. There's no denying that what's new in Swift 5.4 by Paul Hudson is a great write up of what's new in the latest Xcode better, definitely have a read of this article. So update yourself on everything that is new in the latest swift version. And don't forget to update yourself to the latest, Xcode better. One tip though, the latest Xcode version requires Mac OS Bexar, just fac has a nice write up on using Swift UI bindings and combined swift UI bindings and combine are two very distinct technologies available in any swift UI app. In this article, Joseph discusses the difference between bindings and combined and how you can actually interact between these two. It's a great write up if you want to learn a little bit more about all the internal workings of a swift UI components and how it actually obtains its data. Anton finally, has an article on activity expect failure. Activity expect failure was introduced in Xcode 12.5 and allows marking test fails as expected. Yes, you interpreted that correctly. It's actually a way to mark a unit test in Xcode, as you expecting it to fail. Imagine that a unit test failing, but it's okay. Anton explains what could be an actual use case for this, and how this feature exactly works. Rokkor has a article on creating an iOS bar charts in code using Swift. In his post, he will describe how you can actually create a simple bar chart in code and add it to a default UI view controller. The advantage of reading this article is that you will learn that it's not that complicated actually to create a simple graph in Swift. Too often on projects you see that people immediately grab for a third party dependency like charts, which is great, but do you actually need all the weight of this third party dependency simple graphs you can just do in code without the support of any third party libraries. Johnsonville has an article on passing methods as swift UI few actions. Passing methods in Swift is nothing new really, but it is a feature of Swift that is often overlooked. And the fun thing is that passing methods is actually The very viable way to create few actions implementations. And the advantage of this is that the actual implementation is now embedded in a function. And this function is a well defined piece of functionality that most likely has a good chance of being unit tested. settlement has a nice part four in a series building lists and navigation in Swift UI. So room provides a nice overview of what navigation actually is in Swift UI, and what options you have available and how you can actually apply all these different options. It's a long form article, that's basically a great tutorial on navigation in Swift UI. I'm sitting here with Sam again, and we just finished up simulating a technical interview. And Sam, any specifics that you can take away from what we just did,

Sam McGarry: 5:59

there were specific issues within my code that we talked about, and I've specific takeaways about those. But I would say general takeaways, I, I think I need to practice my approach and explain things and and I think I need to really deep dive into my projects, and be prepared to answer a question about any line of code that's within my code base. And I think I was able to answer most of your questions fairly effectively, at least the basic level for most of your questions to get the general answer that you're looking for, we actually

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:35

are doing this for a reason, because quite soon, you will have your second interview, you tried to prepare to that to the best of your abilities. So any big surprises for you, in the exercise that we just did?

Sam McGarry: 6:49

I wouldn't say there were any huge process, something that had me completely caught off guard, there were a few things were off the get go I hadn't exactly I thought about them. So I had to use critical thinking and kind of think on the spot a little bit, which I imagine is going to happen. My actual interviews, well, there weren't any huge surprises. And in that sense, because for example, in my code base, there are a few things that I've used from online resources, like Stack Overflow for simple, simpler things that weren't actually written by myself. And there's also some positive use. But on the other end, that's maybe 10% of my code. But the other 90%, I have, I would say I have a strong grasp, on in general, and I can explain what's going on. And there's a maybe a few little instances there where I have to kind of think on my feet. For the most part, I think I know what's going on in the project.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:53

There's a lot of people that are also trying to get to a junior iOS developer position, any recommendations that you could give them about this specific aspect of trying to get there. And then the aspect that I'm talking about is the tech interview.

Sam McGarry: 8:10

I would say one of the biggest things I've learned during this whole process, or I've learned as important is just the ability to verbally express your understanding of a topic. You may you may be able to, you may understand it in your own head. But being able to explain what's going on, in your own words is important. And it's it's good practice for you. And it's you're going to have to do it during the interview. And it's it's not something like when I first started preparing for these interviews, it's something I told myself, I would it be easy in my head and then I start practicing. And I was like, Okay, well, it's clear, I need some practice on this. So I would say that was probably one of the biggest things I've I've learned during this process. Only thing

Jeroen Leenarts: 8:55

that's left to do is wish you best of luck on your first tech interview. And let's hope for the best and see what happens. Thank you. On February 17, the Coco Chanel will have another one of its online meetups. This time, they will have Brian McLeod, the developer of black box or refreshing oppressive puzzle game presenting at their meetup. It's a puzzle game that uses all kinds of sensor features of the iOS platform. There's a lot of different things you can actually detect going on with a device blackbox puzzles, makes full use of all these features. So I expect this to be a very interesting talk on all kinds of technical features of iOS devices. Donnie and I are gaining some traction with the Core Data workshops that we are organizing. We're selling our first tickets, and we don't have a lot of tickets available actually. So make sure you get yours in time at force one dotnet slash core data. It's the first time for Donnie and I've done this a couple times before so I took my old notes and started sharing with Donnie how you actually do something like this. And with Danny's expertise and my expertise combined. I think this will be a great day for the Attending the workshop? The biggest question, of course, is why should you join this workshop? Well, if you want to use Core Data, and you like the stuff that Tony actually writes with his books, this is the perfect opportunity to get information from the source, ask questions that are specific to your situation, so that you can apply what you learned not next week, but right after the workshop itself. And of course, it does help that you will learn what a cool technology, the Core Data framework actually is on the Mac and iOS platforms. So one final time, app force one.net/core data, look there, sign up join us. And the best part is, we only need to finish up creating the content, sell a few more tickets. And that's pretty much it really, of course, creating the content is a big job. And it's the most important job of a workshop like this. But rest assured, we will get this done, and we will have some time to spare. And then I'm at the final part of this episode. I don't have any time to spare the Monday morning tweet I am skipping this week, but I will make sure to link from the show notes so that you can have a look at it yourself. And I look forward to seeing you talking to you next week. And remember on Thursday, I think there will be a very interesting episode available with two people from my own history actually. Nandini Chow Han and plymstock will be on an interview with me about the work that we did together on the ing banking app. So make sure to pick up that episode on your podcast player and have a listen and please let me know what you think. And send me any feedback that you might have. You can do that through Twitter. And my handle there is at Force One, and that's numeral one at the end. Talk to you next week. I think I'm getting the hang of this maybe