Automatic Reference Counting
Exploring in depth how automatic reference counting works in Objective-C, from common misunderstandings, to how the compiler actually turns things into retains, and much more.
Automatic reference counting is something most engineers working in Objective-C use daily but I’ve frequently seen or heard disagreements or misunderstanding about how it operates under the covers. Lots of misunderstandings and confusion around how weak annotations work, misunderstanding of imprecise lifetime semantics, and much more. In this series, I dive into both how you can use ARC as well as how the compiler implements ARC and the various optimizations it is able to perform to do so quickly and efficiently.