Great Developer Habits

These are notes I’ve taken while watching the video of the corresponding session. They don’t have all the information contained in the video, but I’ve tried to still write the main points for my personal use cases.

Organize

• Use groups that mirros the file system (automatic since Xcode 9)
• Use multiple storyboards for each section of the app
• Use the new build system (necessary for Swift Packages)
• Zero Warnings. Treat them as errors. Do not push to source control with warnings.

Track

• Use source control
• Write useful commit messages
• Run branches for bugs and features (my note: like git flow)
• Keep commits small and isolated

Document

• Comments and Documentation
• Code doesn’t convey why or rationale behind approach taken
• Decision taken at the beginning of the project might be very different from at the end
• Use clear variable names
• Doc Stub. Place cursor at the first line of the function signature ⌥⌘/ and fill in the blanks. Uses native popup that is used in SDK and Standard Library

Test

[Only about Unit Test]

• Even for simple code it is fail-safing for the future
• Run tests before each commit
• Key for CI

Analyze

• Use the Network Link Conditioner

• Use sanitizers (Address -> memory erros

  Thread ->data races

  Undefined -> /0, floating point, pointers

  Main Thread -> UI on background threads) Minimal performance impact, leave them enabled

• Look at debug gauges
• Profiler in Instrument. Use Time Profiler.

Evaluate

• Code Reviews - There is often a better way, two pair of eyes is better than one How to:
• Understand each change, don’t skim.
• Build a project and run it, especially if last commit is a merge
• Run tests
• Read comments and docs
• Read spelling errors
• Consistency with UK and US Engligh

Decouple

• Use shared frameworks to share code between your apps
• Use them to break apart your codebase
• They reduce binary size

Dependencies

• Check your dependency for tracking
• Including dependency with dependencies increases the risk
• Have a plan for dependency deprecation (Swap out, bring it in house, fix bugs yourself)

Source: Great Developer Habits