HomeAuthor InterviewsInterview with Dominik Hause

Interview with Dominik Hause

Dominik Hause is the author of Test-Driven OS Development with Swift; we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Dominik: iOS development, Test-Driven iOS Development, Xcode

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Dominik: In 2015 I was asked if I would like to write a book about TDD in iOS. I believed that such a book was missing. That’s the reason I wrote it.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Dominik: I think the better question is what kind of research did I not do? Over the years, my constant goal has been to try and automate as much of Marketing Cloud as I could. Honestly, for no other reason than a desire to make my life easier because…well…because I am a bit lazy ha ha. I always wanted to find a way to do the things I could already do quicker and easier so I had more time and effort to spend learning new things. Through this, I was diving deep to all things automation. After getting fairly well recognized for my skill here, I thought it was time to get some knowledge outside just self learned lessons. I started taking some online classes and reading books as well as studying other platforms to understand the possibilities there. I would say that with a focus on writing a book I spent nearly a year in research before writing it, but in all honesty, I would say I have been preparing and researching this book my whole career.

Q. What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?

Dominik:As this edition is the fourth edition of the book, this time I didn’t had to do extensive research before. I think, for this edition I had to do research for about 3 to 7 days.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Dominik: The main challenge for me while writing a book is to make the sentences as clear and concise as possible. I only want sentences in the book that are clearly needed to understand the topic.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Dominik: I think Apple could improve the test tooling in Xcode. I’d wish there was first party support for unit tests for SwiftUI. I hope we will see this in the future.

Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Dominik: My book is a beginners book with a clear and easy flow through the chapters. It’s the only book I know that covers SwiftUI testing with ViewInspector, testing async/await and diffable data sources.

Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Dominik: Writing unit tests needs some practice. Test-driven development can help to keep with it. The products become better an easier to change. Everyone can start writing unit tests for iOS apps today.

Q: What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Dominik: Start with the basics. Learn your tools. Keep going.

Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Dominik: xcode.tips

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Dominik: A very good blog to follow it https://qualitycoding.org. Jon writes about TDD and unit tests.

Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Dominik: Unfortunately not. The writing tool (Word) is not suited for writing books. The copy editors changed parts of the book without asking me first. I found four changes, that changed the information in a way that is was wrong afterwards. These errors wouldn’t have been recognisable by the readers as mistakes. I assume that there are several changes like this in the final result that I didn’t find. The code in the book is not syntax highlighted. Especially for the electronic version of the book, this is not acceptable. Code without syntax highlights is hard to read and not a joy.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Dominik: I’m part of the iOS developer community.

Q.What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Dominik: I follow people on twitter and I read several newsletters about iOS development.

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Dominik: I worked a few hours on weekends on the book.

Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Dominik: Get the information on the page. Focus on style later.

Test-Driven OS Development with Swift– available on Amazon.com