Matteo Manferdini

Matteo has been developing apps for iOS since 2008. He has been teaching iOS development best practices to hundreds of students since 2015 and he is the developer of Vulcan, a macOS app to generate SwiftUI code. Before that he was a freelance iOS developer for small and big clients, including TomTom, Squla, Siilo, and Layar. Matteo got a master's degree in computer science and computational logic at the University of Turin. In his spare time he dances and teaches tango.

Learn Swift Programming: The essential step to creating iOS apps

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The first step to making iOS apps is learning Swift.

But learning a new programming language can be daunting if you approach it for the first time.

Nonetheless, if you follow the right path, learning Swift can be fun and rewarding. Many developers worldwide use Swift because they like to build well-crafted programs.

In this article, I show you the right path to learning Swift.

I won’t only cover the how, but I will also explain why each piece is essential to build the whole puzzle.

Organizing Data by Key in Swift Dictionaries

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In Swift programs, it is often necessary to organize large amounts of data within collections.

Arrays are the most commonly used collection in programming. However, it is not always necessary to order data sequentially.

Frequently, data retrieval requires using a specific key, such as when searching for the definition of a word in a dictionary.

Using Guards in Swift to Avoid the Pyramid of Doom

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Conditionals are a fundamental part of programming in Swift.

The first conditional statement you learn is the if statement. It’s not the only one, though, nor is it the most used.

Another example is a guard statement. Guard statements are often much more common than if statements.

A Comprehensive Guide to URLs in Swift and SwiftUI

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URLs are omnipresent in today’s world, and iOS apps are no exception.

The URLs you use in Swift can identify different resources. The most common examples are web content, local files, and REST API endpoints.

The way you handle a URL in Swift depends on two things. The resource it identifies and how you manage the resource in the architecture of your app.

The Best and Fastest Ways to Install Xcode on your Mac

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The easiest way to install Xcode is using the Mac App Store.

But that’s not necessarily the best way.

While you can install Xcode with a simple click, using the Mac App Store is very slow, and the download might hang indefinitely or return cryptic errors.

The best alternative way to install Xcode is to download it from Apple’s website. If you are proficient enough, using the command line is the fastest.

In this article, we will look at all of the alternative ways to install Xcode, how to speed up the process, and how to resolve disk space problems. We’ll also look at the Windows alternative to Xcode.

Powerful Advanced Swift Techniques for Complex Apps

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Any iOS developer, at some point, feels the need to make the step from basic to advanced concepts.

You can get a lot of mileage from the fundamentals of Swift and iOS development.

But working on complex projects demands a new set of tools if you want your code to be reusable and remain at the same time maintainable and testable.

If you are looking to expand your Swift knowledge into more advanced topics and understand why you would need such concepts, this article is for you.

The Essential Guide to Unit Testing in iOS

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Many developers find unit testing confusing. This is made worse by the advanced techniques you need to test classes or asynchronous code, like the one for network requests.

In reality, at the base of unit testing, there are simple fundamental concepts. Once you grasp those, unit testing suddenly becomes more approachable.