Developers usually want to be able to directly connect to a system, start the debugger, and step their way through the code. Being able to log into a machine and debug is the way most of us learn to troubleshoot and fix issues. But what if you can’t do that? And what if I told you there’s a better way to debug?

In the last post, we started to explore how to create a Decoder and its containers in Swift. Now, we need to have a good way to read the data and provide it back to the decoder so that it can create the type instances. Today’s post will introduce pattern for reading binary data and converting it to Swift types. We’ll then discuss how to integrate it with the Decoder.

If we’re going to build a Bluetooth application, we need to be able to decode the data we receive. Swift has a native way to convert encoded data into types – the Decoder protocol. In today’s post, we’ll explore the basics of implementing a custom binary data decoder in Swift. We’ll also look at the different types of “containers” and how they work.

If we’re going to build a Bluetooth app for WatchOS and iOS, we need at least one additional primitive to be available – a 24-bit unsigned integer. Since Swift doesn’t provide that, we’ll just have to create it ourselves. This post will dive into how to create a custom numeric data type in Swift (and how to overcome some limits of the platform in the process).

The world of software development is changing rapidly. With Google’s latest announcement, part of how we deploy systems is getting ready to change for the better for nearly half of all companies. Are your teams ready for the challenge?