What is Swift?

Swift is Apple’s new programming language, which has been in development for the past four years and which looks to replace Objective-C as the main language for app development on Apple’s platforms, OSX and iOS.

It’s a major departure from the syntax of Objective-C and takes a lot of cues from other languages, such as Haskell, C#, Ruby and Python, which Apple presumably hopes will make it appealing to bright young coders, keen on modern languages.

Although it’s a major departure, Apple have taken a lot of trouble to make the transition to Swift as painless as possible. It is fully binary compatible with existing Objective-C libraries and maintains a close relationship with the Cocoa frameworks.

That means that developers can introduce Swift into their apps at their own pace, by writing discrete modules that should seamlessly interoperate with their existing Objective-C code.

What are the improvements around Objective-C?

Type Inference

In Swift there is no need to annotate variables with type information as the compiler can infer type based on the value a variable is being set to. Due to the dynamic nature of Objective-C, type is not truly known at compile time because methods may be added to existing classes, entirely new classes added or instance type changed all at runtime.

Type Safety

With Swift, the compiler can be more helpful in catching subtle type related bugs. As the compiler knows more about type in any method call, it can optimise certain call sites and jump directly to the implementation using C++ style vtable dispatch, rather than going through dynamic dispatch as in Objective-C. This enables smart optimisations that can make code run faster.

Control Flow

The humble switch statement has undergone a radical overhaul in Swift and can now match against ranges, list of elements, boolean expression, enums amongst others. It doesn’t fall through by default, and is further enhanced by Swift’s flexible pattern matching.

Optionals

An optional type is a type that might contain a value of a type. It allows you to more easily convert between types and avoid null checks. Optionals can be chained together to protect from exceptions when calling multiple methods or properties in a chain where one call might return “nil”.

Strings

Strings are now easier to deal with in Swift, with a cleaner syntax than Objective-C, eg: concatenate strings using “+=“.

Here are three tips that can help in the selection process of a developer:

1. Hire for DNA first, then work experience. 
When I hire web developers, their personal DNA is the most important consideration. While experience is important, the bigger predictor of success is someone's innate DNA and how it fits your company. Are drive, determination, persistence, curiosity, important to you culture? Or, are you more low-key and relaxed about time management and deadlines? Whatever characteristics make up your culture, you want to ensure that the web developer will fit in.

For example, a brilliant web developer who has worked at a large financial institution may not do well at a startup. Why? A startup typically requires traits like versatility, adaptability, risk-taking and a self-starter personality, but these may be less important at a large company.

So, make a list of your company's DNA requirements. Do you foster an environment of relentless drive? Do you want great team players? If you come up with five requirements, make sure the interviewee matches at least three. Hiring for DNA also can help you to start to define a company culture and ensure that your team will work well together.

Of course, it's easy for some people to fake it in an interview, so you may need to evaluate them in other ways to ensure they're a good fit.

2. Try out a new developer with a small project first.
Although you might think you've identified your ideal candidate, just to be sure you should give him or her a small, non-critical project. That can let you observe the person in action and provide additional information beyond the job interview.

You can see how efficient the candidate is in delivering products and how buggy the final product is. Did he or she go above and beyond to get the product delivered? How creative was the solution? How well did he or she work in a team and communicate problems and delays? 

3. Pick a developer with aptitude, not a particular skill set.
In the tech space, skills become obsolete every two years, give or take. So, it's better to hire a web developer who can learn new technologies easily rather than someone who knows a specific technology now but may not adapt when a new one comes along.

• The easiest way to detect whether someone will adapt well to change is to ask questions that will reveal whether a Web developer has a love for learning. For example:
• What new programming languages did you learn recently?
• What are your go-to places for learning new tech tips and tricks?
• What are your favorite technology conferences?

So now this is the list how traditionally people test their framework, but can you afford this, and off course issues will be there, so will be the errors, but yes of you still believe in erasing than backspace, probably the article would interest you.

A Paper and Pencil

Paper and pencil you say?  The most powerful and dirt cheap of usability testing tools says I!  The reality is using a paper and pencil to draw interfaces, wireframes, and cards for card sorts and a host of other usability mechanisms is an extremely fast, extremely effective way to conduct usability testing.

Paper and pencil are amazingly simple to use, communicate quite effectively, are so low cost you probably have them all over the office and home, and are just about as cheap as dirt.

You can’t go wrong using paper and pencil to help conduct early prototype usability testing, it’s a great way to get quick, fast and meaningful results at a rock-bottom price.

Pros – Cheap, fast and extremely effective

Cons – Early design stage testing only, not for use in testing interactio

Concept Feedback

Concept Feedback was and is designed as a way to gather input and feedback from experts about new designs for marketing or advertising purposes.  However, this tool can be used by web site designers and usability researchers to gather information about potential new web site designs, or interfaces.

It works quite simply, you submit your concept to the expert community, and reviewers provide their suggestions, recommendations and input about your design.  You then judge the quality of their responses by taking into consideration each reviewer’s quality score, higher scores mean more people consider this reviewer an expert, which means their advice might be worth more.

This community of experts is available free of charge, and because each reviewer can be graded by others it offers a means to determine the quality of each opinion you receive.

Cons – From a usability testing perspective the reviews are not conducting actual tasks (they’re viewing an image), which means interaction feedback is not possible. In addition, there’s no guarantee the reviewer’s opinions reflect the actual user experience once the site is live.

The results can be disastrous, ranging from bruised feelings to tens (or hundreds) of millions in lost sales. Whilst creating an intentional reputation monitoring/management plan ahead of time is certainly optimal, usually by the time we get the call the business is already bleeding profusely. We have successfully listed our views:

• Evaluate the authority of the page on which the negative content is published. As with any SEO assignment, start by taking a look at PageRank and inbound links profile using Yahoo Site Explorer and other tools. If the offending result is not on a site’s homepage, then take a careful look at older and similar interior pages along with their archives. Google’s algorithmic regard for any page tends to accumulate over time as a result of numerous factors, known and “black box.” Therefore it’s a good idea to keep in mind that any page’s clout might increase over time. Be advised and plan accordingly.

• Since some offending results violate copyright or trademark laws, a strong understanding of and willingness to utilize legal channels can be important arrows in the SEO sharpshooter’s quiver. Sometimes the first salvo we fire is from our client’s law firm in the form of a cease and desist letter. Be aware of laws as pertain to protected marks and intellectual property. Certainly taking the             legal route can yield results and sometimes the expense makes sense. Our legal team has scared many an idiot off our client’s back. Some rouges just don’t want to mess with lawyers and can be “encouraged” to take down their problem content.

• Determine the likelihood that the substance of proposed defensive content will further provoke and backfire virally. We find it’s best if newly created content and subsequent promotional activity do not appear to be directly related to the problem we’re competing with. My grandmother used to tell me never to “get into a pissing contest with a skunk. Even if you win…you stink. “Instead, create defensive content that builds on strengths of your business to contradict the negatives raised by a bad editorial. Build your content to outrank the perpetrators.