Multiple Inheritance vs. Traits or Protocol Extensions

A friend asked me at WWDC how Swift protocol extensions (or Scala traits, or Ruby mixins) are substantially better than multiple inheritance. Here are a few links and thoughts.

Cocoa’s mutable-subclass pattern is an antipattern

We know we can’t mutate a mutable array while enumerating, and yes, we have to take care to avoid that. But wait a second—why is that *our* problem, as users of Apple’s Foundation framework?

Be Proactive: Use Reactive

A high-level, easy-to-grasp intro to the core concepts behind reactive programming.

Casting in Swift 1.2: a brief summary

Swift 1.2, in beta with Xcode 6.3, makes some changes to casting. Here’s how as, as?, and as! work: * as is for guaranteed conversions. That is, use as when the compiler can type-check that the conversion is valid; and Swift won’t compile a as cast it …

IBOutlet declarations in Swift

Xcode’s default IBOutlet declarations are weak references to implicitly unwrapped optionals. This is wrong.

Subjective-C: I use property (dot) syntax liberally

I have long argued that methods which look, walk, and talk like getter methods should be called with dot syntax.

Why use GitHub Wikis?

I usually disable GitHub’s Wikis for my repos. Here’s why.

Tiny Swift idioms in ObjC

C macro implementations of Swift’s casting and if-let binding operators.

A list of Auto Layout DSLs, Categories, Etc.

Everyone has their own Auto Layout helpers. Here’s a list.

The problems with due-process-compatible cryptography

Over a sufficiently long timetable, we can only trust cryptography, not due process.

Why non-engineers should care about “Technical Debt”

Technical debt is an abstract concept, but it will impact your customers in tangible ways.

Why Reactive programming techniques are valuable

Reactive programming gives us better tooling to deal with mutable state.

Notes on Initialization in Swift

A collection of links and notes about initializers in Swift.

Physics in Interstellar

I was willing and ready to accept pretty much all of the science in Interstellar. But I have one big problem: rocket fuel.

Back Buttons for Web View Controllers

If Zawinski's Law applies to desktop software, then I propose a corollary for iPhone apps: every app expands until it includes a web browser. In-app browser design is something I care deeply about, mostly because everybody gets it wrong.