Preface
This book will help you to get started with Swift in no time. It helps you understand the nuances of iOS programming not only from a conceptual but also from an implementation perspective. This book is an invaluable resource if you are looking forward to exploring the world of iOS application programming.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introducing Swift, will take the reader through the process of installing Swift and running their first Swift program, in order to expose its power right away.
Chapter 2, Building Blocks - Variables, Collections, and Flow Control, introduces you to the various built-in mechanisms Swift has for representing complex information in expressive and accessible ways, with the help of a real-world example.
Chapter 3, One Piece at a Time - Types, Scopes, and Projects, introduces the tools necessary to closely model the real world with code. It will teach you how to define your own custom types using structures, classes, and enumerations. It also explores the concept of scope and access control.
Chapter 4, To Be or Not To Be - Optionals, focuses on a special and critical type in Swift, called optionals. It includes a detailed explanation of how optionals work and how they can be used, which turns a seemingly complex topic into a very intuitive concept.
Chapter 5, A Modern Paradigm - Closures and Functional Programming, introduces you to a new way of thinking about code called functional programming. We learn how Swift supports this technique and how we can apply it to our programs to make it even more understandable and expressive.
Chapter 6, Make Swift Work For You - Protocols and Generics, describes what generics and protocols are and how they can provide power and safety at the same time.
Chapter 7, Everything Is Connected - Memory Management, pes deeper into the inner-workings of Swift. We discuss how a computer stores information and how we can use that knowledge in combination with some new tools in Swift, to ensure that our code remains responsive and minimizes its effect on battery life.
Chapter 8, Paths Less Traveled – Error Handling, goes into gracefully handling error situations in Swift with error throwing and catching.
Chapter 9, Writing Code the Swift Way - Design Patterns and Techniques, introduces the reader to the art of programming by taking them through a number of specific design patterns that help reduce the complexity of code.
Chapter 10, Harnessing the Past - Understanding and Translating Objective-C, develops a basic understanding of Objective-C with a focus on how it compares to Swift. This allows the reader to make use of the vast resources that exist in Objective-C to help with their Swift development.
Chapter 11, A Whole New World - Developing an App, focuses on explaining the process of creating a real world iOS application, with the help of an example.
Chapter 12, What's Next? - Resources, Advice, and the Next Steps, discusses how to move forward to become the best app developer you possibly can. It provides a list of resources and advice the reader can use to continue their Swift and app development learning process.
What you need for this book
To run the code in this book, you will need Xcode 7.2.
Who this book is for
If you want to build iOS or OS X apps using the most modern technology, this book is ideal for you. Learning Swift will place you into a small developer community that will explode in demand when all the development for Apple's platforms transitions to it. You will find this book especially useful if you are new to programming or if you have yet to develop for iOS or OS X.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
When mentioning pieces of code in text we will use the style as follows: "You can see that "Hello, playground" was indeed stored in the variable.
If the code is longer it will presented as a block as follows:
if invitees.count > 20 {
println("Too many people invited")
}
else if invitees.count <= 3 {
println("Not really a party")
}
else {
println("Just right")
}
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Now, click on Connect on the Remote Desktop Viewer". Keyboard shortcuts will be displayed using the key style.
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