We started writing this book on November 2013. The initial goal was to provide guidelines to write the most clean Objective-C code possible: there are too many guidelines out there and all of them are debatable. We didn't aim introducing hard rules but, instead, a way for writing code to be more uniform as possible across different developers. With time the scope moved to explain how to design and architecture good code.
The idea underneath is that the code should not only compile, instead it should "validate". Good code has several characteristics: should be concise, self-explanatory, well organized, well documented, well named, well designed and stand the test of time.
The main goals behind the curtain are that clarity always wins over performance and a rationale for a choice should always be provided. Some topics discussed here are general and independent from the language even if everything is tied up to Objective-C.
On June 6th, 2014 Apple announced the new programming language to be used for iOS and Mac development in future: Swift. This new language is a radical departure from Objective-C and, of course, has caused a change in our plan for writing this book. It boiled down to the decision of releasing the current status of this essay without continuing our journey in unfolding the topics we originally planned to include. Objective-C is not going anywhere but at the same time continuing to write a book on a language that will not receive the same attention as it used to, is not a wise move.
We have released this book for free and for the community because we hope to provide value to the reader, if each one of you can learn at least one best practice we have reached our goal.
We have done our best to polish this text and make it pleasant to the reader but we may have made typos, mistakes or left any part incomplete. We strongly encourage you to give us feedback and suggest improvements, so please get in touch with us if have any. We particularly appreciate pull requests.
Luca Bernardi
Alberto De Bortoli