I love how deep objc.io dives. They'll present long essays on topics which normally get glossed over in a sentence or two. Particularly useful are their thoughts on the state of objective c design patterns (quite a volatile topic since the release of iOS).
I absolutely loved the views and controls articles, something so basic but so usefully in-depth. I acquired many of the facts they mention through trial, error, and WWDC sessions over the years... my coworkers would think I was talking out my ass when I'd bring up the kind of internal plumbing it mentions (e.g., subviews over drawRect or image views being ridiculously fast) and it's nice to have as a resource.
http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/
AppCode, the IDE that is an extension of my brain. Wonderful inspection abilities at breakpoints. Superlative refactoring and completion. And so very much more.
http://injectionforxcode.com
Injection for XCode and AppCode for hot code injection so that I launch the simulator once and code interactively over many, many changes.
Just a little. The next time I am brought onto an existing project, I will use one of them. For my own code, I generally know how I have built things. I have my own debugging categories to dump view and controller hierarchies.
To make "code visible" as I use an app, I wrote a category that logs -viewDidLoad -viewDidAppear and anything else one wants: https://github.com/mediumbear/LoggingInterceptor
Very handy, never ask "what is this controller called again?", just look in the console.
I rely on AppCode's tools often, but I can't get past the icky-slow-Java-app feeling for everyday use. Do you just put up with it or is there a "Don't feel slow" checkbox I'm missing?
That is interesting, I feel AppCode it is faster than XCode on my machine: 11" Air with 8 megs. I generally have XCode, AppCode and IDEA running and it is all smooth.
Do you have an SSD? I have a 27" iMac that I use as an external screen, because the HDD makes me crazy.
For me it is that I can trust the refactoring implicitly, and undo works everywhere just in case.
After XCode did some very creative refactoring one too many times, I simply lost trust in it. Perhaps things have improved in newer versions, but there is still too much missing: completions that are really intelligent, as well as intelligent templates.
With AppCode, it's become a game of how few keystrokes I can type to have it complete. It feels like 10% must of the time. The guesses it makes are great and what I would use most of the time, almost magical.
I've been meeting to get Dash after hearing about it on a recent podcast (can't remember which one though). Assuming since it's in your "toolbox" you enjoy using it?
Pixelmator and Sketch are a fantastic combination to replace almost everything I'd ever do with Adobe CS.
Sketch is also so much easier to get nice results out of than Illustrator.
I love Pixelmator, but its biggest shortcoming is the complete lack of palette management, especially if you pick up and move between different monitor setups frequently. They need to snap to each other and the sides. They just end up everywhere, including on top of each other. I can never find the ones I need because they're always piling up and changing sizes and locations.
I must say that the list wasn't a full list of resources but the ones that I normally use. There are a lot of useful tools and resources most of the tasks can be done by several apps. The point was giving other people a starting point and getting feedback in new apps.
For example, I've been using PS and I've never liked GIMP ... not sure why. But hearing suggestions, like Sketch and Pixelmator, is motivating to start using them.
Another point is price (not value). There're a lot of tools that I find great but expensive for a single developer. I don't say that I wouldn't use them but... the post was getting super long and it wouldn't reflect what I normally use/check on a daily/weekly basis.
I would like to add PaintCode and XcodeColors.
PaintCode: It's really expensive but it's like a live tutorial on low level view drawing.
XCodeColors: Used in conjunction with heavily modded LumberJack loggers is like logging heaven.
I would also like to add Appium from Sauce Labs[1] as a wonderful way to automate testing on multiple mobile OS-types (and versions) and they are also working on providing cloud-accessible physical devices for testing soon too.
For avoiding vendor lock-in with analytics tools, drip email, and getting your raw usage back out as logs or webhooks, you might check out Segment.io -- you can even change analytics tools on the fly without resubmitting to the App Store.
