Emerging Best Practices in Swift

Presented at Swift Summit SF 2015

Resources:
Colour palette: http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/49963/let_them_eat_cake
In Programming, One is the Loneliest Number: http://blog.codinghorror.com/in-programming-one-is-the-loneliest-number/

Transcript

1. Swift Emerging Best Practices in Ash Furrow
2. Crave Beginners Rules
3. How do we find new ones? Best practices
4. Agenda 1. Learning is necessary, but not sufficient 2. Like coding, learning is a skill that can be refined 3. Being awesome is actually pretty banal
5. Necessary Insufficient but
6. Job Description • Learning is a part of your job description • If it’s not, you’re being cheated
7. Whole We are all part of a
8. What good are nifty coding tricks if you can't show them off to anyone?” –Jeff Atwood “
9. New best practices New Ideas
10. Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” –Pablo Picasso “
11. Improving Ideas • There are very rarely new ideas • Invention is not enough • We should look for ideas that are new to us
12. Improving Ideas • Embrace the new • But never throw away what you know • You can have preferences! • And your preferences can change!
13. Learning can be learned
14. Skillful Learning • Learning is a skill, like any other • It can be learned, practiced, refined
16. How to Learn • Seek out new ideas • Ideas you disagree with • Try things you think will fail
17. Finding New Ideas • Open source code • Blog posts, books, podcasts, screencasts, conferences, etc • Newsletters make these easier • Follow people on Twitter (people who are not iOS developers)
18. Don’t Dismiss • Never dismiss an idea or a person • People will stop talking to you, ya jerk! • People are allowed to disagree with you
19. Discovering “Best Practices” • You’ll know it when you see it • It is a feeling, an intuition • This happens with experience
20. Discovering “Best Practices” • Ask yourself why this? • Write your answer down • Collect your answers, and form principles • Reflect on them • Everyone’s are different
21. Using Principles • Use principles to evaluate new ideas • Not “is this useful?” but rather “when would this be useful?” • Use principles to get better at evaluating ideas • Refine principles over time
22. The banality of Awesome
23. Use the System Buddy
24. KPIs Write down some
25. • Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Relevant • Time-bound SMART Goals
26. Specific • “Read 10 blog posts.” • “Try one new library.” • “Open source a playground.” • “Give a lunch-and-learn.” • “Read a book.”
27. Measurable • How will you know when you’ve accomplished a goal? • Make a “definition of done”
28. Achievable • Be realistic, but ambitious • Remember, this is a part of your job – take it seriously
29. Relevant • Everything is relevant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ • Just reflect on what you’ve learned
30. Time-Bound • We need deadlines • Use Google Calendar with reminders • Set up recurring events to meet & discuss progress
31. Wrap Up 1. Learning is a part of our job 2. It’s not easy, and it’s not comfortable 3. So we need to hold ourselves accountable
32. Intuition Experience
33. Wax on