Swift Apprentice, 6th Edition, Is Now Fully Updated!
We’re happy to announce that Swift Apprentice, 6th Edition, is fully updated for Swift 5.3 and Xcode 12 — and available now! By Tiffani Randolph.
We’re excited to share that our classic book on the Swift language, Swift Apprentice, is now fully updated for its sixth edition!
Swift is Apple’s modern programming language, and it’s the easiest way to get started developing for Apple’s platforms: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Our book Swift Apprentice is for complete beginners to Swift and coding. Even with no prior programming experience, this book will get you ready to take on app development in the Apple ecosystem – and beyond!
Keep reading to see what’s inside this edition, and how you can get started reading for free today!
What’s New in Swift Apprentice?
In the last six years, Swift has gone from being a secret project at Apple to a full-blown, open-source, community-driven language that developers all around the world use to build thousands of amazing apps.
We’ve updated the Swift Apprentice to work with the latest version of Xcode 12 and Swift 5.3. As we do with each new edition, we’ve updated the content for clarity and completeness.
The Swift language has become more stable in recent years, but continues to improve in small but important ways. For example, Swift 5.3 adds multiple trailing closures, and we made sure we covered it.
Although the Swift Apprentice is not a SwiftUI or Vapor book, we present the core language features to make understanding advanced frameworks such as these easier. The book gets better with every edition — and with every new version of Swift!
What’s Inside Swift Apprentice, Sixth Edition
In Swift Apprentice, you’ll learn the basics of Swift from getting started with playgrounds to simple operations to building your own types.
Everything you’ll learn is platform-neutral, meaning you’ll have a firm understanding of Swift by the end of the book, and you’ll be ready to move on to whichever app platform you’re interested in!
Programming is a hands-on experience, and Swift Apprentice makes it fast and easy to both follow along with the code, as well as explore on your own.
The book is broken into four sections. Here’s what you’ll cover in each:
Section I: Swift Basics
In this sections, learn the very basics of programming in Swift. From the fundamentals of how computers work up to language structures, you’ll cover enough of the language to be able to work with data and organize your code’s behavior.
Learn how Swift works with lots of types, including Strings!
Once you have the basic data types in your head, you’ll leverage data in your apps, and learn about an essential data type and optionals.
These fundamentals will get you Swiftly on your way, and before you know it, you’ll be ready for the more advanced topics that follow.
Section II: Collection Types
This section covers collection types in Swift, which are flexible “containers” that let you store any number of values together.
Learn about collections like Arrays and Dictionaries, and how to access and modify them.
There are several collection types in Swift, but you’ll learn the three important ones: arrays, dictionaries and sets. You’ll also learn to apply custom operations and loop over collection types.
Section III: Building Your Own Types
Using what you’ve learned for your own purposes is one of the best parts of developing! In this section, you’ll learn to create your own types by combining variables and functions into a new type definition — and you’ll give them names to develop named types.
Swift includes four kinds of named types: structures, classes, enumerations and protocols. You’ll learn how other named types use the concepts of methods and properties, how they differ, and where you want to use each.
Learn how to approach complex problems with Swift as you build up your problem-solving skills with hands-on challenges!
You’ll also learn about generics and custom types that will help you build larger and complex things!
Section IV: Advanced Topics
After reading this section, you’ll be on your way to being a knowledgable Swift developer by digging into topics even those most advanced programmers use.
You’ll learn to hide complexity in your apps and organize your code through tools like access control and testing. You’ll also work on pattern matching, error handling, and memory management, as well as encoding and decoding types.
Learn advanced Swift concepts, like the difference between value and reference types, advanced protocols and more!
And level up how you approach your code by customizing operators and subscripts, as well as leveraging protocol-oriented programming while using constraints to make generic code more useful.
Swift Apprentice, 6th edition, is fully updated and available today!
Start Reading Swift Apprentice for Free
Hey — did you know that all of our books include free sample chapters, even if you aren’t a subscriber to our site?
We’ve made the full first section of Swift Apprentice free for you to read!
The entire first section of Swift Apprentice – Chapters 1 through 6 — completely free for everyone, so you can to get started learning about Swift. We’re excited to see where your Swift adventures will take you!
You can get started reading the first section of Swift Apprentice at the link below:
Meet the Authors
The sixth edition of the Swift Apprentice is brought to you by six great book team members:
Alexis Gallagher has worked in business consulting, scientific research, iOS development, startup management and theater. Favorite insult? “Unthoughtful”. Favorite color? Green. Favorite way of writing dates? 1970-01-01, he will fight you on that. Perhaps the only software engineer in San Francisco who was born there, he lives there now with his wife, kids, and –soon– a dog!
Ben Morrow delights in discovering the unspoken nature of the world. He’ll tell you the surprising bits while on a walk. He produces beauty by drawing out the raw wisdom that exists within each of us.
Cosmin Pupăză is a tutorial writer from Romania. He has worked with more than a dozen programming languages over the years, but none has made such a great impact on himself as Swift. When not coding, he either plays the guitar or studies WWII history.
Ehab Amer is a very enthusiastic Lead iOS developer with a very diverse experience, from building games to enterprise applications and POCs, especially when exploring new technologies. In his spare time, TV shows take the majority, followed by video games. When away from the screen, he goes with his friends for escape room experiences or to explore the underwater world through diving.
Eli Ganim is an iOS engineer who’s passionate about teaching, writing and sharing knowledge with others. He lives in Israel with his wife and kids.
Matt Galloway is a software engineer with a passion for excellence. He stumbled into iOS programming when it first was a thing, and he has never looked back. When not coding, he likes to brew his own beer.