\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had a week off from Swift Package Index this week as I needed to do some work on this newsletter. Curated (the email service I use) has had some problems recently,<\/a> and I\u2019m investigating what it would take to self-host my newsletter again. It started over 13 years ago as a simple Jekyll<\/a> site with an ESP account, and that\u2019s where I think it\u2019ll end up again soon.<\/p>\n You won\u2019t see big changes when it transitions back to being self-hosted, so why am I talking about it? Well, it\u2019s been a great chance for me to play with a couple of AI developer tools that I\u2019ve been meaning to check out.<\/p>\n First, OpenAI\u2019s new o1-preview<\/a> model that you might have read about<\/a>. It\u2019s designed for larger tasks that take more \u201cthinking about\u201d before the model gives a response. One of the things it\u2019s good at is writing code, so I thought I\u2019d give it the task of turning the structured JSON export of my Curated data into. I spent about ten minutes writing a fairly lengthy specification and included a sample of the JSON data.<\/p>\n It spent about two minutes \u201cthinking\u201d and then produced code for me. It ran first time without errors and did exactly what I asked it to<\/em>\u2026 which is where the only flaw was. \ud83d\ude02 I spent another few minutes writing up a bulleted list of amendments, clarifications, and additions to my original spec, and apart from one small blip,<\/a> I had a working program that did what I needed. It only took two prompts and less than thirty minutes, and the code was better than I would have written.<\/p>\n I also checked out Cursor<\/a> this week, as I said I would,<\/a> and it\u2019s good. I have more to write than what I have room for here, but I can\u2019t go without mentioning one feature that feels like a step forward for inline completion. All AI code completion I have used so far has been additive, suggesting either a line or block of code. Cursor offers that, of course, but it can also offer to edit other parts of a file that might not be part of the same contiguous block of code.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll explain. Imagine you have some inline logic in a variable assignment, and you decide that it\u2019s getting too complex for that line. You might decide to make a new intermediate variable on the line above. Cursor will notice that, and as you declare the new variable with partial logic from the line below it won\u2019t only<\/em> complete the line you\u2019re typing, but also offer to remove the now duplicate code from its original location. It may sound simple, but it\u2019s striking when it happens.<\/p>\n That explanation might not be super clear, so I made a 20 second demo video<\/a> which might clarify things. Cursor performed that edit in two consecutive presses of Tab, but it can also combine two suggestions like that into one. I guess if it feels confident enough that you\u2019d want them both. It\u2019s not 100% clear to me yet how it decides what type of completion or edit it will suggest, but it got it right over and over again as I used it. There\u2019s a free plan that is more than capable of showing what it can do, so there\u2019s no reason not to give it a try if you\u2019re interested in this area.<\/p>\n This feature is what felt like a big step forward to me over line-at-a-time and block-of-code suggestions. It felt like having true assistance rather than completion or generation.<\/p>\n I could talk more about how Cursor also takes advantage of modern LLM models having such huge context windows by using all open tabs as context. It can even include every file in your repository if you choose. I\u2019ll leave that for another time, though. This is already too long.<\/p>\n We live in interesting times.<\/p>\n Dave Verwer<\/p>\n Learn advanced Swift with PointFree.co<\/a><\/p>\n Feeling overwhelmed by Swift concurrency, generics, data persistence, domain modeling, navigation, and testing? Level up your Swift skills with over 190 hours of advanced and original content crafted by industry experts. Subscribe today and save 30% for Black Friday<\/a>!<\/p>\n Black Friday Deals<\/a><\/p>\n Happy Friday, Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Black Friday!<\/p>\n We may not celebrate Thanksgiving over here, but Black Friday is a truly global phenomenon. This year, as always, Marius Landwehr<\/a>\u2019s repo of deals is bang up to date, this year with the help of Noah Tran,<\/a> and you\u2019re sure to find something worth your while.<\/p>\n Michael Tsai also has a great post<\/a> covering even more deals.<\/p>\n App Store Award finalists<\/a><\/p>\n Congratulations to all the nominees. \ud83c\udf89<\/p>\n Alex<\/a><\/p>\n Talking of Cursor and AI code assistants, this app claims to be \u201cThe Cursor for Xcode\u201d! It offers a chat-style interface where you can \u201cchat with your code\u201d and also get it to generate code, even with a nice diff view before it applies it. It also has Tab completion, as you\u2019d expect. I\u2019ve not tried it yet, but it looks to be a companion app that automates Xcode rather than trying to interface with it, but I could be wrong! It\u2019s free while in beta, so give it a try if you\u2019re interested in this kind of tool.<\/p>\n Animate UIKit views with SwiftUI animations in iOS 18<\/a><\/p>\n Natalia Panferova<\/a> blew my mind with this post. Did you know that you could animate UIKit views with SwiftUI animations? Nether did I! It\u2019s so simple to implement, too, as Natalia shows us here.<\/p>\n Introducing Swift Testing<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been waiting for Majid Jabrayilov<\/a> to finish up this series of blog posts, and it looks like he has! Check out the basics of Swift Testing<\/a>, the testing lifecycle<\/a>, traits<\/a>, and parameterized tests<\/a>. They make a great intro to the framework.<\/p>\n My favorite Thanksgiving tradition\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n What a Thanksgiving tradition Holly Borla<\/a> has! I\u2019m not proficient enough with Swift concurrency to offer deep insight into the proposal,<\/a> but I am all for improving approachability. I especially like the idea of allowing modules to opt to be single-threaded.<\/p>\n Happy Thanksgiving, Holly!<\/p>\n In-app settings to adjust every aspect and get things just right<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen many apps in beta or debug modes that include a settings screen like this over the years. I believe it\u2019s a technique that Apple used to use, too, and maybe they still do! It\u2019s so much smoother than the whole compile, install, run, repeat\u2026 loop.<\/p>\n Senior iOS Developer @ komoot <\/a>\u2013 Develop innovative new features from the first idea and concept over to road map planning, implementation, testing, release and monitoring. Team up with six team members to build a state of the art iOS app with more than 5 million installations. \u2013 Remote (within European timezones)<\/em><\/p>\n My gosh, this took me back<\/a>. Not just to Delicious Library, which I remember made a huge splash when it debuted, but to that whole era of Mac software. Those apps are the reason I\u2019m here writing this on a Mac today.<\/p>\n Via John Gruber\u2019s post<\/a> and, unfortunately, this news<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve had a week off from Swift Package Index this week as I needed to do some work on this newsletter. Curated (the email service I use) has had some problems recently, and I\u2019m investigating what it would take to self-host my newsletter again. It started over 13 years ago as a simple Jekyll site […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11768],"tags":[15295,3554,15294,6039],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-84253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple-2","tag-dev","tag-ios","tag-issue","tag-weekly"],"yoast_head":"\nNews<\/h2>\n
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