Swift is a new language to replace Objective-C for OS X and iOS application development. Research firm RedMonk found developer interest in Apple’s Swift has grown dramatically since its debut in June 2014, jumping 46 spots in two quarters.
Swift has best-of-breed features of modern multi-paradigm programming languages and is more similar to languages such as Ruby and Python than it is to Objective-C.
This book is a new addition to a flurry of books on Swift. The authors state in the preface that they primarily target three types of audiences: (1) Objective-C programmers who want to use Swift to enhance their existing apps; (2) Objective-C programmers who want to develop new apps using Swift; (3) Java, C#, and C++ programmers who are new to iOS and OS X development and who want to start developing iOS and OS X apps in Swift.
The authors claim that the book sets itself apart by what they call the “Deitel signatures,” or “the live-code approach.” This means that rather than using code snippets to illustrate programming concepts, the authors provide complete working programs ready to run for OS X (for the first 12 chapters) and iOS 8 (for the last two chapters). All of the programs can run using the integrated development environment, XCode 6, available free from the Mac App Store.
The book has 14 chapters and three appendices. Chapter 1 is an introduction to Swift and XCode 6. Chapters 2 through 12 are each dedicated to a specific Swift programming topic. The book delves into some of the new Swift language features such as the tuples data type (chapter 7). The tuples data type allows creating and passing around groupings of values. A tuple can be used to return multiple values from a function as a single compound value. The book also deals, albeit briefly, with advanced object-oriented topics including inheritance, polymorphism and protocols (chapter 10), and generics (chapter 11).
It is unclear to me whether the “Deitel signatures” are enforcers or detractors for programmer practitioners who are looking for a book to provide a disciplined walkthrough of the language’s new features. The book seems to focus on the language basics, gloss over the advanced features of Swift, and dwell on concepts already common to other programming languages.
I recommend this book as a resource for programmers and developers who are getting started with iOS and OS X apps development. The book can be used as textbook for designing courses on Swift and apps development training online or in classroom settings.
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