Author Archives: Josh Smith

DRY Fusion data munging kata in Swift

Posted on May 29, 2016 by Josh Smith

I worked through one of Dave Thomas’s programming exercises, called a kata, and pushed my Swift 2.2 code to GitHub. The code shows how to apply the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle to two similar but different data processing programs. The end result of … Continue reading →

Posted in Swift | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Creating an iOS Wizard UI in Swift

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Josh Smith

I published a reusable framework, written in Swift, for implementing the Wizard UI design pattern, named Wizardry. It simplifies creating a user interface composed of multiple view controllers that enables the user to complete a task. This is a particularly important UI design pattern for mobile apps … Continue reading →

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Stones on a beach

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Josh Smith

Suppose that you arrange stones into a spiral on a sandy beach. After meticulously arranging your stone spiral, the world seems hell-bent on destroying it. A dog steps on some of the stones, a big wave carries some of them … Continue reading →

Posted in Thoughts, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Find keys by value in Swift dictionary

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Josh Smith

Here’s a helper method that might come in handy when working with a Swift dictionary. It finds every key mapped to a particular value. This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears … Continue reading →

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Striving for excellence as a software developer

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Josh Smith

I’ve been a professional software developer for over a decade, and have been writing code since I was a kid. Over the years I have read a lot of advice from software developers with far more experience than me, to expand my thinking and … Continue reading →

Posted in Sustainable Coding | 4 Comments

Finding unused resource strings in an iOS app

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Josh Smith

If you work on an iOS or OS X app that uses Strings files to store localized display text, over time those files can accumulate entries that are no longer used. Perhaps a developer forgot to remove a resource string when refactoring … Continue reading →

Posted in Swift, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on Finding unused resource strings in an iOS app

Creating Tic-tac-toe in Swift: User interface

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Josh Smith

This blog post is the third and final update about my Tic-tac-toe game, written in Swift. The source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/ijoshsmith/swift-tic-tac-toe The app now has a user interface, which allows you to play against the computer or against another … Continue reading →

Posted in Swift, Tic-tac-toe | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Higher-order functions in Swift

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Josh Smith

This article reviews some very useful higher-order functions available in Swift’s standard library, by showing a simplified implementation of each function. Along the way, I’ll explain how all of the higher-order functions are based on a single loop. Let’s get higher Similar to how a rock … Continue reading →

Posted in Swift | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Creating Tic-tac-toe in Swift: Artificial intelligence

Posted on December 5, 2015 by Josh Smith

This blog post is the second update about my Tic-tac-toe game, being written in Swift. The source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/ijoshsmith/swift-tic-tac-toe Over the past week I wrote an intelligent agent which implements the Tic-tac-toe strategy devised by Allen Newell and … Continue reading →

Posted in Swift, Tic-tac-toe, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Creating Tic-tac-toe in Swift: Gameplay and data model

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Josh Smith

This blog post is an update on my work-in-progress Tic-tac-toe game, being written in Swift. The source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/ijoshsmith/swift-tic-tac-toe I’ve reached the first major milestone. The program is capable of playing Tic-tac-toe against itself, although there … Continue reading →

Posted in Swift, Tic-tac-toe | Tagged , | 1 Comment