WWDC21 Thoughts

Time for a bit of a wrap-up on some thoughts for WWDC 21 this year now that it’s over.

I’ve been reading many people and many reports saying it wasn’t a big year for the conference this year. Nothing too exciting. And I’m going to respectfully disagree with all of that because I think the perspective is wrong.

My perspective is that a good year is any time we get anything that moves platforms forward, improves the tools use, the way we do things.

For example, we got a ton of new APIs this year. We’ve got this new Xcode cloud system that will help us build something that I find very interesting, which to me is significant.

The ability to write SwiftUI applications on the iPad in Swift Playgrounds and submit them to the store is big news. Okay, it might not be earth-shattering, and maybe you cannot do complex apps. But you’ve got to think forward. Think next year, the following year. That is a massive step right there.

There are lots of new things in Xcode to help us out. Somethings that we probably won’t even notice or appreciate at first, which smooth the process of writing our code, testing our code, improving our code, sharing our code. These are big deals to us as developers.

Having new features is nice, but I care more about a solid OS foundation. As I’ve said before, I like off years, where it is about fixing bugs.

If you keep turning out earth-shattering things every year, you’re just piling on the technical debt and bugs. You’ve got to go back and fix them at some point, and you can’t make massive new features in a year and expect them to be bug-free and perfect, regardless of what size company you are.

So I respectfully disagree in some ways with my colleagues out there saying that it wasn’t a big year.

Often, things like smoothing the process for writing my testing, running my test reports, getting that data back, accessing it, working with my team members without leaving X code. These are all essential daily tasks.

Because if we don’t get our daily tasks done quickly and efficiently, and accurately, The bigger picture doesn’t matter because you’re never going to escape those everyday tasks.

So for me, WWDC21 was a perfect one. I have got lots of videos I need to go through. I look at this, and I say, you know, between now and the new OS’ released in the fall, all I’ve got to be doing is looking to improve or make minor changes to anything that I’ve written to be compatible.

I don’t feel the pressure of getting these implemented by the end of the year for the Fall releases. As a developer and manager, this is something I like. We can introduce these things as we want and investigate and learn them at our pace.

I believe that for everybody, there’s at least one gem every year at a WWDC that gets you super excited. Let me know what you think.

I think there are things in the works that were not ready for this year, and that’s why they filled some gaps in the keynote and state of the union.

That thought alone makes me excited for WWDC22.