Posts on Ahmed Komsan

Swift - Powerful Yet Overlooked Functions for problem solving -- Part 1

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Swift is known for its simplicity and expressive syntax, but some incredibly powerful functions often go unnoticed. These lesser-known built-in functions can help solve common programming challenges more efficiently, making your code more readable, concise, and performant.

let’s explore a set of Swift functions that will help you write cleaner, more elegant solutions to everyday problems.

What we’ll cover

Smarter iteration and loops with stride
combining sequence and parallel Iteration with zip
Quick validation with allSatisfy(_:)
Lazy Sequence Generation with sequence
Categorizing data with Dictionary(grouping:by:)

Smarter iteration and loops with `stride`

Stride function provides a flexible way to create sequences of values based on a specific range and step, making it useful for various looping and iteration scenarios in Swift.

KeyPaths in swift

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

1 - What are Keypaths in swift
2 - Types of KeyPaths
3 - Swift 5.2: Key path as functions
4 - Using keyPaths
See Also
Conclusion

1 - What are Keypaths in swift

KeyPath is an object that stores a reference to a property of a type, that keyPath object allow us later on to get/set their underlying value ( defer/stash getter and setter evaluation when needed ) using subscript operator. you can then pass these keypaths objects around to create an API with shorter and cleaner syntax.

Getting Started with Diffable Data Source

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Diffable Data Source is a new declarative API for UITableView and its counterpart UICollectionView introduced at WWDC19, IOS 13 as a replacement for UITableViewDataSource and UICollectionViewDataSource.

In this article we will take a brief look at UITableViewDataSource then we will go directly to the new API and see how it works with an example.

UITableViewDataSource

Previously, when working with UITableView or UICollectionView you would implement UITableViewDataSource protocol providing the table view with the details of how to display cells and supplementary views ( headers and footers ) and what data you want to render.

Introduction to Function Builders in Swift

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Function builders is a swift language feature, first introduced in swift 5.1 available from Xcode 11. it helps in building declarative DSL ( Domain Specific Language ) for constructing user interface hierarchies or create an API that apply transformations to the statements in a way that make the API easier to read, understand and write.

what are function builders

function builders is nothing more than a type with certain functions that lets you easily build complex objects like HTML,XML or UIView hierarchies in a concise and readable way without any verbosity or in general apply some transformations to the statements of a function and combining them into a single result ( return value ). for example, this is how we create a HStack in SwiftUI.

From ASCII to Emoji: The Story of String Encoding in Swift

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every String you type in Xcode has a long, messy and surprisingly human story behind it. By the end of this article you will know why "😀".count is 1, but "😀".utf8.count is 4, and how we got there: from a 7-bit table in 1963 to emoji today.

Let’s follow that story and see how each step shows up in the Swift code you write today.

1963 ● ASCII 7 bits, 128 English characters
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1980s ● Code pages same byte, different characters
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1991 ● Unicode one number for every character
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1991–96 ● UTF-16 2 bytes (or 4), endianness problem
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1992 ● UTF-8 variable length 1 to 4 bytes
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2001 ● UTF-32 fixed 4 bytes
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2010 ● Emoji one character, many character numbers
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2014–19 ● Swift stored as UTF-8, shown as characters

The Basics

Before the story starts, we need four simple ideas. Everything later builds on them.