Weekly Comment
Recently, I began refactoring one of my apps, with full Swift 6 support being a key consideration. During this process, I first attempted to achieve perfect compilation for my self-built third-party libraries in Swift 6 mode.
The code in these libraries isn’t complex, and after some adjustments, most could compile without warnings in Swift 6 mode. However, this result didn’t particularly please me. Reviewing the modified code, I realized that the changes were more about appeasing the compiler rather than approaching concurrency safety challenges from a holistic design perspective with a fresh viewpoint.
Swift 6 attempts to preemptively mitigate risks in complex multi-threaded environments through stricter compiler checks. While the compiler can provide considerable assistance to developers, we shouldn’t overly rely on these safety prompts. Instead, we should rethink how to construct code structures that not only meet compilation requirements but are truly safe and reliable, based on a deep understanding of Swift’s new concurrency tools.
It’s foreseeable that Swift 6 will bring additional troubles and burdens to developers for a considerable period, especially for beginners. As new frameworks and APIs extensively adopt new concurrency tools, Swift language newcomers may face these profound issues too early, potentially affecting Swift’s promotion and application.
However, from another perspective, the rapid development of AI has both lowered the entry barrier in certain fields and demanded that developers master more skills and possess the ability to integrate knowledge to avoid being replaced by AI. The challenges brought by Swift 6, to some extent, also build a new line of defense for human developers. After all, for quite some time, AI will still lack excellent abstract thinking and overall planning abilities.
Therefore, to maintain our value in the AI era, we shouldn’t set “code compiling without warnings in Swift 6 mode” as our sole goal. Instead, we should view it as an opportunity to deeply understand language evolution, enhance our system design capabilities, and truly master the essence of concurrent programming.
Recent Selections
How to Use EditorConfig Files in Xcode
Developers often encounter different coding styles and conventions when managing multiple projects, necessitating manual adjustments to Xcode’s editor settings each time they switch projects. This is not only cumbersome but also prone to inconsistencies in code formatting. To address this issue, Xcode 16 has introduced support for EditorConfig files, allowing developers to programmatically define editor settings for each project. Pol Piella provides a detailed introduction to this new feature in this article and shares how to use EditorConfig in projects.
It’s worth noting that in Xcode 16 beta 6, Xcode must be restarted after any modification to the EditorConfig settings for the new configuration to take effect, which is a known bug.
SwiftUI for Mac 2024
In this article, Sarah Reichelt explores some of the new features of SwiftUI in 2024. As the author of the book macOS by Tutorials, Reichelt particularly showcases many new features introduced for macOS at WWDC 2023 and WWDC 2024. The article covers window management, tab syntax updates, preview enhancements, as well as new color mixing and mesh gradient effects. Reichelt argues that after years of development, SwiftUI has increasingly unified code across Apple’s platforms, enabling high code sharing across platforms. However, developers still need to consider the characteristics of different platforms during development to ensure that the app’s user experience aligns with the platform’s design philosophy.
Getting Setup With Xcode Cloud
Xcode Cloud is a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) platform provided by Apple, which simplifies the processes of building, testing, signing, and releasing applications for developers. In this article, Darryl Bayliss thoroughly explains the entire process from setup to workflow management, including creating and configuring workflows, setting triggers, running shell scripts, and viewing workflow results, along with a wealth of practical advice and best practices.
Cross-Platform Swift: WebAssembly
In this article, Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis demonstrate the potential of combining Swift with WebAssembly for cross-platform development. They detail the entire process from setting up the project to interacting with the browser, including how to configure WebAssembly in Xcode, use the JavaScriptKit library to manipulate the DOM, and utilize Swift’s Observation framework for data binding. This approach allows developers to build browser applications using familiar Swift code and share the same models and business logic with the iOS platform. This opens up new possibilities for Swift cross-platform development and shows how to build applications for different platforms using a single codebase.
My History with Code Editors: From Syntax Highlighting to AI Generation
This article reviews Baoyu’s journey with code editors since 1999, showcasing the evolution from simple text editing to modern AI-assisted code generation. Through personal experience, the author narrates the use of different editing tools at various stages of development and their impact on efficiency. The article traces the progression from basic notepad, through syntax highlighting and intelligent sensing, to today’s AI generation, illustrating how editing tools have evolved with technological advances. The author believes that as technology progresses, the improvement of development tools is inevitable. The key is how to use these tools to more efficiently build quality software, rather than fixating on the process of manual coding.
Update: Tips and Considerations for Using Lazy Containers in SwiftUI
Last week, a user reported that the optimization mechanisms of SwiftUI break down when the top-level structure type of a List’s subview is _ConditionalContent. After testing, I confirmed this issue and have proposed a solution. Details of this phenomenon and relevant considerations have been updated in the current article for developers’ reference.