Deep Dish Swift '24 - Day Two

I missed the first talk of the day because I was tied up with some in-person interviewing (🤞), so I missed Krzysztof Zablocki’s talk on “The Art of a Balanced Life.” Bummer too, that sounds like a talk I would’ve been into.

Kim Arnett gave a thorough overview of accessibility best practices, particularly with iOS. A great reminder that building accessible apps is good for everyone, not just those we typically consider “disabled.” There are so many circumstances where even the average person benefits from such work. Kim says it’s, “just the right thing to do” and I couldn’t agree more. I need to do better. Kim shared a link to a 14 day free trial of the accessibility tools from deque. I need to ask her permission before sharing said link, but these tools are probably worth checking out.

Craig Clayton, of Design to SwiftUI fame, gave a solid talk on rethinking test-driven development by reframing it the way he does. Craig prefers an “outside in” approach that begins with design and UI and works its way back to lower level code (state, models, etc.). I’m not sure my brain works this way, but it was interesting to consider his perspective, since he's someone who often bridges the gap between design and development. Craig had good energy and a great vibe.

Jordi Bruin built and shipped an app in 30 minutes using ChatGPT and some audience participation. This was the highlight of the day for me. Jordi’s talk was both creative on the technical side, but also a bit philosophical. He urged us to stop being so precious and just have fun. A solid reminder for the perfectionists in the room. He incorporated Roadmap, a package he helps maintain and which I’ve been meaning to try for months and months. We almost named the app he/we built Gerard, which I found hilarious.

Christian Selig shared his experiences building community around his apps, primarily around Apollo (may it RIP 🪦). Somehow, this was Christian’s first time presenting at a conference, though he could’ve fooled me. The talk itself was full of interesting ideas and techniques, but the bits about just being authentic and open really landed for me.

Chris Vasselli gave an incredibly thorough overview of how he handles (and automates) localization for his apps. It was inspiring to see how much he is able to accomplish as a solo dev simply by being smart and automating in clever ways. He shared specifics on how he localizes everything from App Store screenshots and descriptions to in-app strings, all with code samples and his reasoning for each approach. I appreciated how open he was about the income his apps are generating. Bravo. I will definitely be trying some of these techniques out.

Ariel Michaeli, CEO of Appfigures did a live, on stage App Store Optimization roast of audience-submitted apps. I was expecting this to be uncomfortable and cringy, but it ended up being really productive, interesting, and useful. I immediately signed up for an Appfigures trial.

The day wrapped up with a live recording of the Launched podcast with Charlie Chapman and Sean Allen. It was excellent and you should give it a listen once it’s published.

To cap off the day, RevenueCat and Runway co-hosted a happy hour at Short Fuse Brewing and the place was absolutely packed by the time I headed home. I expect there will be some slow-movers this morning for day three’s talks. 😎