Swift Insights: Weekly Articles on iOS Development

Handling money in software is a task that requires precision, especially when dealing with fractions of currency like dollars and cents. One common mistake that developers make is using floating-point data types, such as Double, to represent monetary values.

This post explains why this is problematic and what alternatives you should use.

In Swift, optionals play a crucial role in managing situations where a value might be absent. Unlike Objective-C, where nil can be assigned to any object pointer without much regard for safety, Swift’s optionals provide a more structured and secure way to represent missing data.

Void is a concept familiar across many programming languages. In Swift, Void has a unique and specific meaning, rooted in the language’s type system.

This post explores the intricacies of Void in Swift, how it relates to the empty tuple (), and how it is used in functions, methods, and closures.

As a programmer, you will often need to represent the concept of “nothingness.” In Swift and Objective-C, this idea manifests in various forms: nil, Nil, NULL, and NSNull.

Each of these serves a distinct purpose and is used in different contexts. Understanding these concepts is fundamental to mastering memory management, type safety, and interoperability between Swift and Objective-C.

When working with Swift, one of the key decisions you’ll often face is how to represent data types. While specificity in defining data types is generally encouraged, Swift offers three flexible type options: Any, AnyObject, and AnyHashable.

Understanding when and how to use these types is crucial for developing robust and interoperable Swift applications.