jtbrown

You're absolutely right — I just know the iOS dev world best at this point.

I agree — I think testable code is generally just better code because it requires the decoupling of dependencies.

Hey, everyone! I'm Josh Brown and I co-created this course. I'd love to answer any questions you have about how it works -- or about REST & JSON in Swift in general.

Here's one of our most common questions so far:

What medium is this course in? Youtube? PDFs that I can read through?

The lessons come via email, and we're going to have a Live Q&A chat on GrokSwift.com towards the end of the course.

We've put a lot into this, and we hope you love it!

If you're talking about either the bad (pyramid of doom) code in Myth #1 - or the good code there, then it is indeed protecting against null values in the JSON. When you try to cast with `as? String`, it returns nil when there's a null value in the JSON and the code in the `if` block is skipped (and the `else` block is executed if one exists).

Wait... who told you I was writing that book? Just wait till you read next week's article: "Debunking the myths about networking in Swift"

I'm the author, and I'd love to hear what you think and answer any questions you have.

Here are some of my favorites - what others do you like?

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. What's good, bad, right, wrong, or missing? Do you need a Computer Science degree?

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts - whether you agree or not.

And I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you think this is better than shoving everything into the view controller?

I'm here and happy to answer any questions you have about getting started with iOS.

I'm here to discuss anything you disagree with or have questions about.

If you want to learn the basics of testing with the XCTest framework in Objective-C, this screencast is a good way to start.

Not sure why it took me so long to find the Replace Regex feature in Xcode...but it's really powerful and useful.

I totally agree that comparing a cup of coffee to an app is ridiculous, even if they cost the same. And I think you're right - it's because a cup of coffee is a known thing.

I use this all the time to find out what bugs are where - whether they've made it to staging or production yet.

Apple has been inconsistent about the use of colors and buttons - sometimes two things look the same, but one's tappable and one's not.

Good points about Evernote - I'm not sure what went into their decision to support iOS 7 only, but I'm sure they considered it.

"I guess I was lucky that I still had it on my phone cause otherwise, I would be left without the ability to install it now."

That's not entirely true any more - Apple is now allowing users to install the "last compatible version" of apps. More on that from Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/17/apple-ios-last-compatible...

Eventually, yes, most users upgrade. But Apple's stats showed about 6% of users still on iOS 5 a full year after iOS 6 was released. I'd imagine we'll see similar numbers with users going from iOS 6 to 7 - lots of them won't upgrade for a full year, and some will never upgrade. Mixpanel is currently showing 36% of users on iOS 6 - that's not an insignificant number. I'll be supporting iOS 6 for probably another year.

Yeah, that navbar issue killed my productivity for at least a day. Glad I finally found the topLayoutGuide property so I can align my views properly.

If you want to deny people from installing on older devices, you can just set the target to iOS 7, meaning you need iOS 7 to install it. Doing that means it can only be installed on iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and later, and iPod Touch 5th gen and later.

Glad it was helpful to you. Tell me - do you build views in RubyMotion programmatically? If so, I suppose that -[UIViewController topLayoutGuide] would be useful, right?

I'm amazed at how a tool like email can create and destroy so much productivity. And I still don't really believe that there's not another solution out there - a way to send email without the inbox.

I'm surprised at how many apps push distractions at us, and how tricky it is to find these settings. Mail for me is a big one - I get tons of email every day, and having my iPhone buzz or ring each time is ridiculously distracting...

I'm a huge fan of coworking spaces. Depending on your budget and needs, sometimes you can even rent a desk to call your own. It's been great for me to work around other developers, bump into people and have interesting discussions, and just get out of the house.