Year in Review: 2015

2015 was a pretty busy year for Realm. From talks to releases, here are some of our favorite moments!

Releases

We had 24 releases this year, which took us from Realm Java 0.76 and Realm Cocoa 0.89 (remember when we only had Objective-C?) to Realm Java 0.87 and Realm Objective‑C & Swift 0.97.

Realm Java picked up better sorting, encryption, ARM64 & x8664 support, RealmModules, configurations, in-memory Realms, null support, an async API, a new migration API, a dynamic API _(Ed. note: How many APIs do you people need?), and most recently RxJava support.

Realm Cocoa of course had its biggest change in its Swift-first API, with all the associated Swift-y improvements. Other than that, all it got was encryption, sharing Realms between processes, Objective‑C generic support, support for watchOS & tvOS (Ed. note: How many OSs do you people need?), configurations, KVC collection operators, KVO, class subsets, and bitcode… so basically nothing else.

We also spent some time on a few side projects:

• SwiftLint - Our Swift linter, which just launched this year!
• jazzy - The Swift documentation generator, which went from lowly v0.0.19 to v0.4.1, adding support for Objective-C along the way, and is being used all over the web.
• Realm Browser - Our OS X browser for Realm files, which is now on the App Store.

Blog posts

We published almost 200 articles to our blog this year. PHEW! We’re so happy that so many of you found them interesting! In case you missed some, here are a few of our favorites that are worth catching up on:

• Tiny Networking: Building Micro-Libraries in Swift - Chris Eidhof on the simple power of functional programming techniques, even for APIs.
• Controlling Complexity in Swift, or Making Friends with Value Types - Andy Matuschak on the value of value types.
• The Making of Falcon Pro 3 - Joaquim Vergès on rewriting an app in three weeks.
• Our NSPredicate Cheatsheet - Us on the many powers of NSPredicate.
• Natural Language Processing with Swift - Ayaka Nonaka on building your own spam detector.
• Zero-Cost Abstractions - The enigmatic Airspeed Velocity on climbing the ladder of abstraction.
• Unsafe Swift for Fun & Profit - Russ Bishop on what we in the biz like to call “#yolo Swift.”
• Swift, Meet Objective‑C - Daniel Tomlinson on making the new kid be friends with the old guard.
• WWDC 2015 Swift Panel Discussion - An all-star cast on Swift after its first year.
• Humanities x Technology - Ashley Nelson-Hornstein on the marriage of sciences and humanities.
• A Eulogy for Objective‑C - Aaron Hillegass on a death that may have been greatly exaggerated.
• How We Beat C++ STL Binary Search - Us on how we quenched our need for speed.
• Reverse-Engineering iOS Apps: Hacking on Lyft - Conrad Kramer on how to seemingly effortlessly steal all your secrets.
• The Astonishing Powers and Mesmerizing Secrets of 3D Touch - Alexis Gallagher on the newest iOS input method, and how hot dogs won’t operate it.
• Accessibility Three Ways - Sommer Panage on three tales of #a11y gone right and wrong.
• Core Data Threading Demystified - Marcus Zarra on how to use Core Data the Best Way™.

2016

With the way 2015 went down we feel like we’ve got a lot to live up to in 2016. We’re setting our sights even higher (25 releases!), and we’ve got big plans in the works. I hear you saying “Where’s my bulleted list of those?”. All in good time, friends, all in good time. For now, relax, enjoy your holidays, and Happy New Year, from all of us at Realm!