Tymit at NSSpain 2022
Tymit's iOS team attends the 10th edition of NSSpain.
Two weeks ago, the Tymit iOS team had the opportunity to assist in the tenth edition of the NSSpain. One of the most known iOS/macOS-related events in the world. Each edition, the organization bring speakers from all the continents who deliver top-flight talks.
After two remote editions, this edition allowed us to engage again with the iOS community. Because the event is not only about the technical side, also it is about the community. This event brings us the opportunity to meet software creators and crafters around the world.
After seeing the schedule, the team went crazy. Few talks focused on the actual Tymit app architecture, The Composable Architecture or TCA. Furthermore, Brandon Williams (one of the creators of TCA) was one of the main speakers. We felt it would be a special edition, and we were not wrong.
One more thing: NSSpain is located in Logroño (north of Spain) and is known for wine (Rioja) and food. Also, the event matches the beginning of the regional holidays (San Mateo). So, after finishing the event, the party starts. We know it is not an important part, but it is essential.
Let me share with you the highlights of each day.
NSSpain 2022, Day 1
The day started well. First talk: Composable Architecture at Scale by Krzysztof Zabłocki. It wasn’t an easy talk. Because one of the TCA creators was sitting in the first row, you can check out the talk here.
The talk Celebrating App Icon Design was impressive. Michael Flarup made a master class about design and icons in our apps, why they are essential, and how to improve their impact on our users. Amazing speaker. Check out the talk here.
The first Spanish company on stage was Wallapop. Jessica Hernández Velarde showed us how they use metrics during the development and release process: Improving the iOS development process guided by technical metrics. We get valuable learnings to apply and discuss with our Platform teammates.
Johannes Fahrenkrug gave an outstanding talk about how to be bad in a good way, Living dangerously: The why and how of safely using private APIs on iOS. Private APIs could help you get the solution, but you should do it carefully.
Great talk from another Spanish, Pedro Gómez, from GoodNotes, to talk about Swift WebAssembly + GoodNotes, a cross-platform story! How to use Swift for other purposes rather than mobile is always interesting.
And we finished the day with day Server-Driven UI, from macOS to iOS. Marci Krzyzanowski from Judo app presented how it is possible to have remote Swift code in a server and update it without passing the App Store. Crazy! Server side on Swift can also be written using Vapor and Docker, which may allow us to execute tests differently as we do nowadays or populate Apps with it.
NSSpain 2022, Day 2
The second day started intensely. Matias Villaverde and Rens Breur from Soundcloud showed us how they are Rewriting SoundCloud in SwiftUI. It was interesting to see the way big companies execute the migration to the new UI paradigm.
And we continued with a talk about history: CocoaPods, ten years of maintenance, and what I would do differently. Orta Therox is an open-source engineer who builds and maintains one of the most successful dependency managers in the iOS ecosystem. Is it possible to run cocoapods in Docker to manage the dependencies so it would be an interesting way of providing this part as it can integrate seamlessly with our CI/CD.
Out of the technical talks, Rob Napier gave an inspiring talk about mentoring the next generation: Kids Today!
Animation, animation and more animations with Adam Bell (Netflix). Crafting Responsive and Playful Interfaces is an enlightenment talk about how animation can improve the user experience. He explained how to improve your animations using the Motion framework (UIKit). The talk included an impressive demo.
JP Simard from Lyft presented the Lessons from Mobile Networking at Scale. A dive into the Envoy Mobile project, a powerful open source networking library which provides a ubiquitous API and abstraction for mobile application networking. Also, it offers unparalleled networking functionality and observability to modern distributed applications and API design. Using GRPC, latencies are working on streams of real-time; this can be extremely useful for some app functionalities, like showing information in real-time.
They left the best for the last talk. Brandon Williams from Point-Free was talking about URL Routing with NavigationStack. He is one of the TCA creators, our architecture approach for all the apps we develop in Tymit. Furthermore, he talked about a subject we are deeply interested in, navigation. It was a win-win.
Conclusions
As I mentioned before, this edition was terrific. The opportunity to gather the whole team around an event and a community and present the Tymit brand is remarkable. After the talks, we get the security that we are on the right path. We decided two years ago to bet on an idea: the unidirectional data flow, and we are so happy with the outcome.
As a full-remote company, spending two days with teammates sharing knowledge and having fun is the best team building of the year. The team returns with new ideas and inspiration, and the bindings are stronger with the feeling of belonging to the best tech community.
Next year, we will come back and try to be on the stage.