#44 - Create ML, Blockchain, Fast attributed strings

Programming Language Classifier

Legendary developer and author Mattt has recently come back in the open source scene after working at Apple. His newest project is Flight School a “book series for Swift developers”.

This project is a companion for the article “Training a Text Classifier with Create ML and the Natural Language Framework” showing how to go “from zero to Core ML model in minutes”.

If you find Machine Learning daunting but are curious to get your hands dirty be sure to check it out.

Note: The iOS Times is not sponsored by or affiliated to Flight School.

Blockchain Swift Playground

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrencies, have become mainstream buzzwords, with many startups, speculation, and charlatans revolving around them.

What gets less coverage but is way more interesting and powerful is the blockchain technology powering it.

Frederik Riedel shares the Playground that won him a scolarship at this year’s WWDC, showing how to create a blockchain.

Sift

I love open source apps, and I love useful apps. Sift is both. This app by Alex Grinman allows users to Sift track network traffic in real-time for every app, and then create rules to block sites like ads and tracking pages.

StyledTextKit

This library by the makers of GitHawk, the open source GitHub client for iOS, is all about attributed strings.

The problem StyleTextKit aims to solve is that “apps with lots of text embedded in UITableViewCells or UICollectionViewCells, UITextView bring scrolling to a grinding halt”. The library provides a declarative API and promises for fast rendering, providing background-thread sizing, bitmap caching, and custom attribute interaction handling for things like link taps.

Other interesting projects

• WhatsNewKit a super customizable framework for building “What’s new” screens.
• SwiftEntryKit a banner presenter library with tonnes of stilysh presets.
• MessengerKit framework to build Facebook Messenger-like interfaces