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Swift for programmers
Deitel P., Deitel H., Prentice Hall Press, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2015. 400 pp. Type: Book (978-0-134021-36-2)
Date Reviewed: Sep 18 2015

Why Swift? Why another programming language? Those were the main questions I asked when I read that Apple published a new programming language for its various OS Xes, replacing Objective C. I only wrote one or two Objective C applications, just for fun, and I have to say I did not like it too much. I always preferred Java or standard C++. But since I was getting ready to write some apps for the Apple Watch, I was quite excited about Swift (Apple promised it would make writing apps much easier). No real easy-to-read literature was available at the time, just the voluminous Apple documents. So this book was a test case for me to learn Swift.

The book contains 14 chapters. The first two chapters provide an introduction to the Apple ecosystem and Xcode 6, and introduce Apple’s new playground, some kind of interactive developing environment. Next, it starts with a simple application--the counterpart to the famous “Hello World!” example--and shows how to compile and run the source code. First surprise: no semicolons! Back toward writing basic applications. The follow-up chapter describes how to define classes, objects, and methods. Interestingly, Apple uses different names and ideas here compared to Java or C++; for example, declarations are strange for the beginning and one uses “public private(set) var” for a setter. If you know other object-oriented languages, the basic concepts are quite clear, but you have to adapt to the Swift syntax, which looks a little strange to me. Once you have mastered this, the book explains the basic language-related constructs, like if/then/else, loops, functions, arrays, and so on. This can be done and learned quite quickly; only chapters 10 about inheritance and 11 about generics require more attention. I found chapters 13 and 14, on how to develop an iOS 8 app, to be quite interesting. Actually, these chapters describe what most programmers will do with Swift. Both examples are well written and easy to understand--a great help to write your own app.

I had much fun reading the various chapters (not all, to be honest; some Swift ideas I grabbed just by looking at the examples the authors provide). The book helped me understand the basics of Swift programming in a short time. The authors also provide a really neat structure--software engineering observations, good programming practices, performance tips, error-prevention tips, and so on. If you have Xcode at hand running (as I did), you can immediately test the recipes from the book and gain the most from reading it. I really recommend this introduction to Swift.

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Reviewer:  K. Waldhör Review #: CR143786 (1512-0999)
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