iOS Development: Threading and Grand Central Dispatch

40mIntermediate2020-07-22

Authors

Grace Njoroge

iOS developer specializing in Swift, Firebase and agile methodologies

Course details

Users expect their iOS apps to be fast and responsive. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD)—a Swift framework that allows you to execute code concurrently on multicore hardware—can help you ensure that your app meets these expectations. In this course, instructor Grace Njoroge helps you get up and running with GCD, explaining how to put code or tasks on threads to speed up your iOS app and make it more responsive to users. She covers asynchronous and synchronous execution, deadlocks, how multithreading keeps apps from stalling while handling heavy operations, how to work with queues, and how GCD factors into all of these topics. Along the way, she shares scenarios that lend a real-world context to these concepts.

Skills covered

XcodeSwiftiOS DevelopmentiOSMobile DevelopmentAppleProgramming LanguagesSoftware DevelopmentOne-Off

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - iOS development - Grand Central Dispatch
02 - What you should know

1. Evolution of GCD

03 - Traditional threading
04 - What is Grand Central Dispatch
05 - Adding multithreading
06 - Challenge - Optimizing the collection view
07 - Solution - Optimizing the collection view

2. Working with Queues

08 - What are queues
09 - The main queue
10 - The global queue
11 - Developing a custom queue
12 - Challenge - Download images in a collection view
13 - Solution - Download images in a collection view

3. Asychronous vs. Synchronous Execution

14 - What are async and sync programming
15 - Dispatching asynchronously
16 - Dispatching synchronously
17 - Challenge - Load images in a collection view
18 - Solution - Load images in a collection view

4. Concurrency vs. Parallelism

19 - What are deadlocks
20 - Avoiding deadlocks using dispatch async
21 - Challenge - Resolving a deadlock
22 - Solution - Resolving a deadlock

Conclusion

23 - Digging deeper into GCD's API