March 14, 2017

Professional iOS Engineering YouTube Series

March 14, 2017/ Caio & Mike

We are very excited to share with you the launch of our new series Professional iOS Engineering, on the Essential Developer's Youtube channel.

During the series Caio and Mike pair program and demonstrate the discipline of test driven development, the power of modular systems, and how to welcome future requirements. They maintain a sustainable development cycle and continuously reflect on how to become more effective while paying attention to technical excellence and good design.

March 09, 2017

Adapting and Succeeding in the iOS Industry

March 09, 2017/ Caio Zullo

When Apple released Swift to the world, a new era of excitement began.

I've seen this trend of new technologies coming and going many times, but when a company as big as Apple releases something, you can be certain it comes with a staying power. This is particularly true of a language that Apple is actively investing in and betting on as the future of development on its platforms...

February 23, 2017

Engineering the Journey of Continuous Learning

February 23, 2017/ Mike Apostolakis

It's important for professional software developers to always be learning, but this often requires effective time management. Indeed, balancing a professional and personal life, all while having to constantly improve by gaining and applying useful knowledge, can be challenging.

A valuable discipline I’ve practiced over the years is delegating the discovery of relevant and high-quality content to others simply by following their work and activity. This technique can save time required for research, it can serve as a quality filter to the data encountered, and it can expose you to opinions of people who may not necessarily agree with you (something I recommend).

February 23, 2017

It's Time To Fix That Swift Class

February 23, 2017/ Caio Zullo

Recently I faced an interesting problem. A new client wanted to present some HTML content in a UIWebView — sometimes from an external URL, sometimes from a local URL.

The client’s application was already presenting HTML, so I thought it’d be easy to reuse that component. To my surprise, the WebViewController class was 817 lines long. Presentation, flow, error handling, business logic, and more. It was a nest of conditionals with no tests...

February 23, 2017

Consequences of Ineffective Communication in iOS Teams

February 23, 2017/ Mike Apostolakis

In the software industry, it’s not uncommon to encounter the following behavior in teams: developers are excited and productive at the beginning of a new project or building a new feature, but as the development progresses and time goes on, their enthusiasm decreases.

I believe one of the reasons behind this change is the ineffective communication between team members. As software developers, we sometimes fail to understand the needs of our peers, and at the same time, we fail to effectively communicate our own needs. Let me illustrate this with a story.

February 23, 2017

Fearless and Productive Use of 3rd-Party iOS Frameworks

February 23, 2017/ Caio Zullo

When I began my professional career, I worked in a company where using third-party frameworks wasn’t allowed.

We had to write all our features from scratch, building them in such a way that they could be reused in additional projects as our own internal frameworks...

January 24, 2017

Providing Value as an iOS Developer

January 24, 2017/ Caio Zullo

In my last blog post, I explained why independent deployment is not achievable in systems where you don’t have control over the release process, like Apple’s App Store. However, that principle extends to independent development, open/closed systems, modular design, and more that can maximize your team productivity, allow you to focus on interesting problems to solve, and cash you that full bonus at the end of the year.

It extends to being a valuable developer that can generate huge profit...

January 13, 2017

Swift, Uncle Bob, and The Dark Path

January 13, 2017/ Caio Zullo

This week Robert C. Martin, aka, Uncle Bob published a blog post that made a lot of people mad.

Chris Eidhof wrote a nice response with his point of view on the subject, in which I believe they agree more than they disagree on the matter.

Some other responses weren’t that nice. I understand they felt hurt in a personal level and that’s why I tend not to get into those discussions however I feel like I could be part of this one since I see that both sides have very good points and I’m sure there’s much to learn there...

Articles

Essential Developer