A presentation I gave at the March 2013 Tokyo iOS Meetup. It covers some of the trends I see emerging in App Development.

1. The State of App
Development: 2013

2. • 4 years ago: the single developer.
• The status quo for iOS Development is
changing rapidly.
• Many of these changes are a result of the
ecosystem surrounding the iOS platform.

3. Third-Party Libraries

4. CocoaPods
• CocoaPod is a dependency manager similar
to Ruby gems.
• This is the biggest change to my workflow
as an iOS Developer.
• http://cocoapods.org

5. In a text editor, make a Podfile:
platform :ios
pod 'AFNetworking', '1.0'
pod 'JSONKit', '~> 1.4'
On the command line:
> pod install
Also useful:
> pod search <name>

6. You can make you own Podspec like this:
Pod::Spec.new do |s|
s.name = "Cocoa-Touch-Barcodes"
s.version = "0.0.1"
s.summary = "Fork of Jeff Lamarche's original barcode generator
library at http://code.google.com/p/cocoabarcodes/"
s.homepage = "http://code.google.com/p/cocoabarcodes/"
s.license = { :type => 'New BSD', :text => "" }
s.author = { "Jeff LaMarche" => "jeff.lamarche@gmail.com" }
s.source = { :git => "
https://github.com/netshade/Cocoa-Touch-Barcodes.git", :commit =>
"d0aabd00efa" }
s.platform = :ios
s.source_files = ''
s.public_header_files = '*.h'
end
end
end
end
end
end
end
end
end
end
end
end

7. The number of third-
party libraries is
growing.

8. http://www.cocoacontrols.com/

9. Ditching XCode

10. AppCode

12. Clang does code completion
#include <stdio.h>int main(){ printf("nHello
Worldn"); return 0;}
> clang -cc1 -xc -fsyntax-only -code-completion-at -:5:12 - < test.c
COMPLETION: __func__COMPLETION: __FUNCTION__COMPLETION:
__PRETTY_FUNCTION__COMPLETION: asprintf : [#int#]asprintf(<#char **#>,
<#const char *, ...#>)COMPLETION: clearerr : [#void#]clearerr(<#FILE
*#>)COMPLETION: ctermid : [#char *#]ctermid(<#char *#>)COMPLETION:
ctermid_r : [#char *#]ctermid_r(<#char *#>)COMPLETION: dprintf :
[#int#]dprintf(<#int#>, <#const char *restrict, ...#>)COMPLETION:
fclose : [#int#]fclose(<#FILE *#>)COMPLETION: fdopen : [#FILE
*#]fdopen(<#int#>, <#const char *#>)...
COMPLETION: printf : [#int#]printf(<#const char *restrict, ...#>)
...

13. It is Possible to Autocomplete in Other
Text Editors
• Vim has ClangComplete
• Emacs has YASnippet and autocomplete
• Sublime Text has SublimeClang

14. Not Objective-C (or C++, or C
or Objective C++)

15. alternatives.
Now there are more
and more.
Now there are more
and more.
Now there are more

16. Stuff That Has Been
Around for a while
• JavaScript frameworks (PhoneGap, Titanium,
...)
• Game frameworks: (Unity, Corona...)

17. Not a comprehensive list
RubyMotion has some attention because it
allows access to UIKit.

18. Not a comprehensive list
Xamarin (formerly MonoTouch, which
*has* been around for awhile) announced
2.0, which can write iOS apps in C# using
Visual Studio.

19. Objective C will be Apple’s mainstay
language for long time to come.

20. But other tools are available and have
even been maturing for a long time.

21. One reason is that Apple used to reject
alternative programming languages.
That fear is almost completely gone.
That fear is almost completely gone.
That fear is almost completely gone.

22. NOTE: At this meetup, we have never
had a presentation on developing in a
language other than Objective C.

23. Testing

24. Unit Tests
• GHUnit (https://github.com/gabriel/gh-unit)
• Cedar (https://github.com/pivotal/cedar)
• Kiwi (https://github.com/allending/Kiwi)
• WiteBox (
http://code.google.com/p/witebox/)

25. Integration Tests
• Frank (http://testingwithfrank.com)
• Kif (https://github.com/square/KIF)
• Zucchini (
http://www.zucchiniframework.org)

26. Most of the standard practices from web
development are now available in mobile
app development as well.

27. PonyDebugger
• https://github.com/square/PonyDebugger

28. Super Debugger
• http://shopify.github.com/superdb/

29. App Services

30. Not a comprehensive list
TestFlight (https://testflightapp.com) /
HockeyApp (http://hockeyapp.net)

31. Not a comprehensive list
Hosted CI: https://hosted-ci.com

32. Not a comprehensive list
Localization (http://applingua.com)

33. Not a comprehensive list
Crash Reports (http://try.crashlytics.com)

34. Not a comprehensive list
Device Testing
(http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com
)

35. Not a comprehensive list
If you have a problem, some one has a
service to solve it.

36. One of the biggest changes is that the
ecosystem surrounding app development
is growing at a rapid rate.

37. People who recognize these changes, and
that things are changing, will be able to
develop quality apps more quickly by
making use of these tools.

38. But, following all of the developments is
becoming harder and harder.

39. The moral of the story: the days of a
single developer making a successful app
are probably much harder, but following
the ecosystem will probably to give you
the best advantage.