I'm not a fan of random string literals in a project and I always try to find solutions to avoid them. In today's episode, I show you an elegant solution to rid a project of string literals.

A brand new Xcode project defines two build configurations, Debug and Release. Most projects define one or more additional build configurations for various reasons. This isn't new and it's a good practice to use build configurations to tailor a build to the specific needs of the environment it's going to be deployed to.

I hope we can agree that source control is a necessity for every software project. The most popular option for Cocoa and Swift development is Git. I've been using it for many years and I continue to appreciate its power and simplicity every day. It's easy to pick up thanks to its gentle learning curve. If you're not comfortable using Git from the command line, then take your pick from the many native clients for iOS and macOS.

I make ample use of self-executing closures in a range of scenarios. In this episode, I show you several patterns in which self-executing closures come in useful and can improve the code you write.

The basics of Swift are easy to learn, but the language has evolved significantly over the past few years. The more I use the language, the more I learn about it and discover its lesser known features. In this episode, I would like to share a handful of tips and patterns I have picked up over the years. They are easy to implement and have the potential to transform messy code into elegant, readable code.

To be productive and efficient, you need to know your tools. For a Swift or Cocoa developer, that means mastering Xcode. While Xcode is a complex piece of software with a fairly steep learning curve, the tricks listed in this episode should significantly boost your productivity.

I don't like long or complex viewDidLoad() methods. The viewDidLoad() method of a view controller should be short and easy to understand. The tip I am about to share with you helps declutter the viewDidLoad() method of the view controllers in your projects.

I love that access control is an integral component of the Swift programming language. Access control lets you carefully control what properties and methods an entity exposes. Rigorously applying access control has significant benefits. You can even improve performance through access control.

The JSONDecoder and JSONEncoder classes make working with JSON a breeze. The true star is Codable, though. Codable, a type alias for Decodable & Encodable, is flexible and provides a lot of functionality for very little effort. From time to time, you run into a situation that makes you scratch your head. This episode covers one such situation. How do you encode null using JSONEncoder? The good news is that the solution is fairly straightforward.