Nil Coalescing Newsletter - April 2026
Hi there,
This month we traveled to Japan for try! Swift Tokyo. It was the first time in Japan for both Matt and me, and we had a really good time.
The conference was great, really well organized, with strong talks and workshops across the board. It was nice to meet the Japanese iOS community in person, and also connect with developers from many other parts of the world.
Group photo of speakers, organizers and attendees gathered at try! Swift Tokyo
We stayed on for a few extra days after the conference to explore the city. Tokyo is beautiful, full of parks and gardens, some busy and lively areas, and a lot of very good food. We hope to go back next year.
try! Swift talks
All the talks at try! Swift were recorded, and the organizers were quick to get them up on YouTube. You can view the entire collection on the try! Swift Conference YouTube channel.
I did a talk on the Evolution of SwiftUI, sharing my perspective as someone who has used SwiftUI since its very first release and also contributed to its development at Apple. I covered the main drivers of change in SwiftUI and gave an insider look at how SwiftUI APIs come to life. I also walked through three major changes in SwiftUI: the navigation API redesign, the migration from Combine to Observation, and rich text display improvements. For each one I explained what motivated the change and why the newer APIs are worth adopting. I wrapped up with a few tips for staying up to date with SwiftUI and why that matters.
The SwiftUI Way book reception
It's now been a month since I released my new book The SwiftUI Way, and the reception has been really good. I've gotten many emails, DMs, and comments from developers who have found the book useful.
Here are a few quotes that made me really happy:
"I'm enjoying your new book 'The SwiftUI Way'. It is very well written. Clear. Well organized."
"I recently read your book 'The SwiftUI Way', and I want to thank you. The book is simply wonderful. It covers all the anti-patterns that Codex produces and shows how to fix them. Thank you very much for your work."
"I started reading your latest book 'The SwiftUI Way' during my flight home from #tryswift, and in every chapter I found answers to issues I'm dealing with every day without understanding them. A must-read!"
I also got an email from someone who picked up my SwiftUI book bundle and started from SwiftUI Fundamentals. It was the nicest feedback I could have hoped for.
"... the explanations of view identity and data flow made sense in a way that just hadn't gotten through to me no matter how many other tutorials or bits of Apple documentation I read. I'm not even 20% through the first one and I'm already so much better off."
I'm very grateful to the iOS community for all the kind words, support, and encouragement. Getting feedback like this is really motivating and keeps me writing and sharing.
Blog and YouTube channel updates
Around the trip to Japan, I published two new blog articles this month.
📝 Embedding SF Symbols in SwiftUI Text: Combine text with icons and style them using modifiers in SwiftUI by leveraging LocalizedStringKey interpolation.
📝 Overview of the onChange() modifier in SwiftUI: Explore the different variants of the onChange() modifier in SwiftUI, including how to access old and new values, trigger the action on initial render, and run asynchronous code in the action closure.
I also released a new YouTube video with some advanced tips for working with optionals in Swift. I shared these as part of my talk "Swift's Hidden Gems" at the ARCtic Conference back in February, and a lot of developers were surprised by them.
▶️ Advanced Techniques for Working with Optionals in Swift: Explore some of the lesser known techniques for working with optionals, that can make our code cleaner and safer.
Discounts
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