Interview questions: Introduction
Getting ready for a job interview is tough work, so I’ve prepared a whole bunch of common questions and answers to help give you a jump start. But before you get into them, let me explain the plan in more detail…
Watch the video here, or read the article below
Once you’ve polished your resume, prepped your portfolio, and applied for the job of your dreams, you still have one major hurdle to get through: the interviews, which might be an hour if you’re lucky, or potentially a day or two if it’s for a bigger company or a more senior role.
I’ve done a lot of job interviews in my time, and I’m also responsible for maintaining the world’s largest collection of interview questions for Swift developers – questions that are specifically and directly used by countless companies around the world. So, I tell you the kinds of things you’re likely to be asked in your interview, but that’s not enough by itself.
Yes, if I were to tell you all the most popular interviews questions, it would give you something to plan for and prepare for, and hopefully would give you extra confidence when walking into the interview that you have good answers ready. But it wouldn’t do much to help you structure those answers – it wouldn’t give you guidance on what to include in your answer, or how to structure things, and so on.
So, this section of Hacking with Swift+ is designed to solve that problem: not only have I selected the most common interview questions for you, but I’ve also answered them in detail, explained the approach I would take, and often provided code samples to, so you have the complete toolkit needed to really ace your next interview.
You’ll see a few things come up regularly, and I want to repeat them here:
- There’s a lot of value in being pragmatic – in not sticking to one fixed idea because it’s your favorite thing, but instead being able to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of multiple concepts.
- It’s often a good idea to list a few possible answers to a question, then pick one or perhaps two to zoom in on and discuss in detail.
- Giving a simple, factual answer matters, and is usually the first thing you should do, but make sure you follow it up with some hands-on examples you have from real-world projects, and ideally also some discussion of any nuances or complexities that show you have experience.
- Although I’m not a big fan of asking folks to write code while someone is watching them, it’s a good idea to have some simplified examples you can present if needed.
- All the best questions lead to open discussion where the interviewee can focus on what interests them or go off on tangents, so look for areas where you can explore topics together and show off your knowledge.
There’s one bonus tip that isn’t about iOS: if they ask you whether you’d like some coffee or something, say yes. I don’t care if you don’t want coffee – ask for tea, or water, or soda, or something, just take the drink. Why? Because when they ask you a tough question, you can take a sip of your drink and pause for just a moment, and in doing so buy yourself a few seconds to phrase your answer as best as you can. Seriously, it works – take the drink!
If you liked this, you'd love Hacking with Swift+…
Here's just a sample of the other tutorials, with each one coming as an article to read and as a 4K Ultra HD video.
Find out more and subscribe here
42:32
FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING
FREE: Transforming data with map()
In this article we’re going to look at the map() function, which transforms one thing into another thing. Along the way we’ll also be exploring some core concepts of functional programming, so if you read no other articles in this course at least read this one!
36:18
HIGH-PERFORMANCE APPS
FREE: Using memoization to speed up slow functions
In this article you’ll learn how memoization can dramatically boost the performance of slow functions, and how easy Swift makes it thanks to its generics and closures.
14:26
NETWORKING
FREE: User-friendly network access
Anyone can write Swift code to fetch network data, but much harder is knowing how to write code to do it respectfully. In this article we’ll look at building a considerate network stack, taking into account the user’s connection, preferences, and more.
20:01
INTERMEDIATE SWIFT
FREE: Understanding generics – part 1
Generics are one of the most powerful features of Swift, allowing us to write code once and reuse it in many ways. In this article we’ll explore how they work, why adding constraints actually helps us write more code, and how generics help solve one of the biggest problems in Swift.
31:55
DATA STRUCTURES
FREE: Trees
Trees are an extraordinarily simple, extraordinarily useful data type, and in this article we’ll make a complete tree data type using Swift in just a few minutes. But rather than just stop there, we’re going to do something quite beautiful that I hope will blow your mind while teaching you something useful.
19:50
SWIFTUI SPECIAL EFFECTS
FREE: Shadows and glows
SwiftUI gives us a modifier to make simple shadows, but if you want something more advanced such as inner shadows or glows, you need to do extra work. In this article I’ll show you how to get both those effects and more in a customizable, flexible way.
6:52
FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING
FREE: Functional programming in Swift: Introduction
Before you dive in to the first article in this course, I want to give you a brief overview of our goals, how the content is structured, as well as a rough idea of what you can expect to find.
27:33
INTERMEDIATE SWIFT
FREE: Understanding assertions
Assertions allow us to have Swift silently check the state of our program at runtime, but if you want to get them right you need to understand some intricacies. In this article I’ll walk you through the five ways we can make assertions in Swift, and provide clear advice on which to use and when.
24:11
ADVANCED SWIFT
FREE: How to use phantom types in Swift
Phantom types are a powerful way to give the Swift compiler extra information about our code so that it can stop us from making mistakes. In this article I’m going to explain how they work and why you’d want them, as well as providing lots of hands-on examples you can try.
11:03
ULTIMATE PORTFOLIO APP
FREE: Ultimate Portfolio App: Introduction
UPDATED: While I’m sure you’re keen to get started programming immediately, please give me a few minutes to outline the goals of this course and explain why it’s different from other courses I’ve written.
32:08
CUSTOM SWIFTUI COMPONENTS
FREE: Creating a WaveView to draw smooth waveforms
In this article I’m going to walk you through building a WaveView with SwiftUI, allowing us to create beautiful waveform-like effects to bring your user interface to life.
14:20
INTERMEDIATE SWIFTUI
FREE: Creating a custom property wrapper using DynamicProperty
It’s not hard to make a basic property wrapper, but if you want one that automatically updates the body property like @State you need to do some extra work. In this article I’ll show you exactly how it’s done, as we build a property wrapper capable of reading and writing documents from our app’s container.
23:07
ADVANCED SWIFT
FREE: Making the most of optionals
Swift’s optionals are implemented as simple enums, with just a little compiler magic sprinkled around as syntactic sugar. However, they do much more than people realize, and in this article I’m going to demonstrate some of their power features that can really help you write better code – and blow your mind along the way.
32:42
MAKING THE MOST OF FOUNDATION
Storing preferences efficiently
Apple’s UserDefaults system lets us store small amounts of user data for our app, which might sound simple but it’s deceptively powerful. In this article I’ll show you the correct way to create initial preferences, how to share preferences across applications, how to synchronize data with iCloud, and why this is a case where property wrappers probably aren’t a good solution.
18:21
SOLUTIONS
Moonshot
This challenge asks you to add some extra text to the mission view, break up at least two SwiftUI views, then, for something harder, allow the user to move between a grid and a list for missions. Let’s tackle it now…
38:12
SOLUTIONS
Challenge 1: Converter
This early challenge day asks you to build a converter app that’s able to move between any two similar units, such as kilometers and miles. Let’s solve it now, then we’ll take it further, and then we’ll take it even further…
2:03
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
What features of recent iOS versions were you most excited to try?
To get right to the point, if none of SwiftUI, Swift Charts, widgets, or SF Symbols interest you, you might be in the wrong career.
56:38
HACKING WITH SWIFT LIVE 2020
Adding matched geometry effects to Journeys
In this part we’re going to look at an example solution to implement matched geometry animations in our Journeys app.
17:54
ULTIMATE PORTFOLIO APP
Organizing the project itself
UPDATED: We have one last easy task before we look at something trickier, which is to organize the Xcode project itself. Here I’m going to show you two different approaches so you can contrast them yourself, then explain which I prefer and why.
23:21
ULTIMATE PORTFOLIO APP
Posting comments through CloudKit
The last major piece of CloudKit work we’re going to add will let users post comments on shared projects – hopefully encouraging ones! This will combine querying and writing CloudKit data in a single part of our app, and also demonstrate how to write single records rather than several at once.
