does anyone know whether UIView's properties (position and size, opacity etc) just pass through to CALayer or the other way round? or is it somehow bidirectional?

I think UIView passes through to CALayer, it's the only way that makes sense from everything I've read.

@hikari Hikari can I introduce you to my friend named Ghidra

@saagar I don't want to contaminate myself with Apple implementation details, so I refuse to use Ghidra on the OS frameworks, just apps that use them :p

@saagar also it's kind of a fun puzzle this way

@hikari You can also log messages through to CoreAnimation (after which the implementation turns to C++)