📌 Some Swift Best Practices I Always Try to Follow

Over time working on different iOS projects, I’ve noticed that certain Swift practices really make a difference — both in keeping the code clean today, and making life easier months later when you come back to it.

Here are a few I always try to stick to:

🔹 Prefer structs over classes

Whenever possible, I use structs. They’re safer with memory management, especially when dealing with multithreading.

🔹 Protocol-oriented programming first

Instead of building deep inheritance trees, I prefer small, focused protocols. It makes my code more flexible and easier to test.

🔹 Be very careful with optionals

Force unwrapping is something I avoid unless there’s absolutely no other choice. I always prefer guard let, if let, or early returns to keep things predictable.

🔹 Keep functions small and to the point

If a function starts getting too long, it’s usually a sign that I need to break it down. One function = one clear purpose.

🔹 Use access control properly

I try not to leave everything public or internal by default. Setting things private or fileprivate where needed helps to protect the internal logic of a module.

🔹 Don’t ignore Swift’s error handling

Instead of just returning nil, I prefer throwing detailed errors. It makes debugging much easier down the road.

✅ I’m still learning every day, but following these basics has saved me a lot of trouble — especially on larger codebases.