Top 10 WWDC 2016 Videos
Wondering which WWDC 2016 videos are the best for developers to watch? Check out our recommended top 10! By Tim Mitra.
10) Visual Debugging with Xcode
One of the true joys of being a software developer is dealing with your app suddenly exiting to home screen, runaway loops generating thousands of objects, or a delegate not performing an expected task. OK, I’m kidding. Think of it this way: which do you do more often: add features, or fix bugs?
Debugging an app is actually enjoyable when you can fix a bug. This year Apple has greatly improved the debugging experience in Xcode with enhanced visual debugging tools. First up, they’ve added the ability to debug issues at runtime as well as during build time with a new runtime scope. Using Xcode, you can now detect data races, unpublished mutexes, threading issues and call handlers.
The view debugger has been greatly enhanced: app snapshots are generated 70% faster. Layout rendering is also more accurate, and you can render blurs and transforms right inside Xcode. With the exploded view, you can now explore an object’s properties, object hierarchies and inspect Auto Layout constraints. Ambiguity in Auto Layout can also be displayed at runtime.
The killer feature of the visual debugging in Xcode is the new Memory Graph Debugger. If you pause the app while it’s running, you can display the objects graphically. You can examine relationships between objects, who owns what object and what type of references it has. For leaked memory, there is a Cycles view which gives you a graphical representation of of a cycle. Bold connecting lines represent strong connections, while grey lines represent weak references.
The debugger can also export a new Memgraph file which you can examine later. This file type can also be used in your continuous integration solutions. If you love breaking code as much as I do, then you’ll love this session. Sadly, I do enjoy debugging. :]
Where to Go From Here?
In summary, here are our picks of the top 10 WWDC videos to watch:
- Platforms State of the Union
- What’s New in Swift
- What’s New in watchOS 3
- Improving Existing Apps with Modern Best Practices
- What’s New in Cocoa Touch
- Protocol and Value Oriented Programming in UIKit Apps
- What’s New In GameplayKit
- Introducing Swift Playgrounds
- What’s New in SpriteKit
- Visual Debugging with Xcode
Want some help getting up-to-speed on all the new iOS 10 APIs? We are working on a new book about this called iOS 10 By Tutorials – and subscribers get free access! :]
Which WWDC Session most impressed you? Feel free to share your own favorites in the discussion below – and happy video watching! :]