Now available to pre-order: Swift Against Humanity

Try the all-new card game that’s taking the Swift community by storm!

Paul Hudson April 1st 2023 @twostraws

So you think you know Swift? Think again! Fresh from the success of our audiobook launch, Laboratoires TwoStraws is back with an all-new card game that will finally give you something to do while waiting for Xcode to finish indexing.

It’s called Swift Against Humanity, and the rules are both dazzlingly simple and also surprisingly similar to some other games you might have previously heard of: one player places a black card on the table that contains a question or part of a sentence, and all other players play one white card they think best completes it. The first player then shuffles the white cards, reads them out, then picks a winner – it’s literally minutes of fun.

Black card: The secret to making your Swift code run fast is blank. White cards: Craig Federighi’s hair gel, some tasteful WWDC-themed cosplay, Paul Hudson’s dog army, two dozen force unwrapped optionals.

Pre-orders for Swift Against Humanity start tomorrow, with the first deliveries going out in the next week or so. Plus, we’re pleased to announce three incredible editions:

Swift Against Humanity Standard Edition: for the language purists out there.
Swift Against Humanity Enterprise Edition: for all you folks busy building with Swift Enterprise Edition.
Humanity Swift Concurrency Against Edition: for all developers who just love adding concurrency in places it really doesn’t belong.

Black card: What’s the most difficult thing about learning Swift? White cards: Always googling Swift and getting Taylor Swift results, converting a string to an array then back to a string then questioning your life choices, desperately trying to remember which button does what in Interface Builder, accidentally creating a black hole with Xcode’s Auto Layout constraints.

Swift Against Humanity was developed in conjunction with legendary game designer Daniel Leivers, who had this to say: “Apple Store Genius Bar Fight Club! Clippy, but for Xcode! Fantasizing about the day Swift Evolution brings back Objective-C! I can literally write anything on these cards and people will buy them, we’re going to be so rich! Wait… are you recording this?”

Black card: Apple’s newest Swift tutorial unexpectedly features a lesson on blank. White cards: Building an iMac with wheels, Tim Cook’s surprise rap career, trying to decipher closure syntax without crying, Core Data: when you need to store data, but also test your ability to withstand migraines.

We’ve been busy testing Swift Against Humanity for months now. Even Ed Kermenek, the Swift project lead, took a few hours out of his busy schedule to try it out, and had this to say: “Swift Against Humanity is neat and all, but the most important thing is that it doesn’t have any ****ing orange.”

Black card: What new feature will Apple announce at this year’s WWDC? White cards: A sentient UIButton, the official Swift coding soundtrack, a support group for developers who are traumatized by Swift strings, doggo-driven development.

Now at this point I know what you’re thinking: surely a game this great must attract a premium price tag? Well, you’ll be pleased to know that all three editions of Swift Against Humanity are available for just 5 SwiftCoin plus tax and delivery.

Plus if you order now we’ll send you an exclusive Spot the Swifty poster plus four limited edition bonus white cards:

“When your app gets rejected for a feature that's in 100 other apps.”
“Longing for the days of UIKit's warm embrace.”
“Manually managing memory like it's 2010.”
“Using integers to index into strings the way god intended.”

Black card: As any Swift developer knows, the hardest thing we face is blank. White cards: Playing pin the tail on the guideline violation with App Review, reenacting Groundhog Day with Xcode provisioning profiles, the moment when you realize that radar you filed might outlive you, that one coworker who won’t stop using AnyView

So, the next time Xcode tells you to try breaking up an expression into distinct sub-expressions, try breaking out Swift Against Humanity instead!

Pre-order Swift Against Humanity now