Core Data turns 21 this year — and it's not dead. But it's starting to feel like a visitor from another era. Concurrency wrapped in perform, model declarations buried in boilerplate, string-based predicates waiting to bite you at runtime. This article isn't telling you to leave. It's asking a harder question: if you're staying, what can actually be done?

https://fatbobman.com/en/posts/why-i-am-still-thinking-about-core-data-in-2026/

Why I'm Still Thinking About Core Data in 2026

Core Data remains widely used in 2026, but its mismatch with modern Swift concurrency, type safety, and code expression is growing. This article outlines the three core pain points and introduces a path to modernization without abandoning Core Data.

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@fatbobman

The CoreData predecessor (EOF 3.1) is 34 years old and still feels fresh and modern with its multilayered architecture.

A historic note: as far as I was told by someone working at NeXT, HairForseOne was the one to invent the EditingContext (ModelContext). Together with WebObject’s RequestResponseContext “discovered” by the late Jean-Marie Hulot, EditingContext is one of the most clever developments (patterns) in software engineering.

@tuparev I couldn't agree more with your assessment of the Context pattern. It's a bit of a pity that since Core Data's primary use cases have shifted to desktop and mobile apps, we rarely see scenarios today that fully unleash the true power and elegance of this architecture.