Swift Apple book. 20 Best Swift Books For Learning iOS Development In 2020

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Best Swift Books For Learning iOS Development In 2020

2019-11-05

Swift Books

Swift has been years in the making, and it continues to evolve with new features and capabilities. We can’t wait to see what you create with it.

Swift is a compiled programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and Linux applications.

Often referred to as “Objective-C, without the C,” Swift language is in many aspects superior to its predecessor.

Here you will get Best Swift Books For Learning iOS Development In 2020.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books for learning Swift.

.Pro iPhone Development with Swift 5

Aspiring iOS app developers familiar with the Apple Swift programming language and/or the iOS SDK, but ready to move to the next level.

If you’ve already learned the basics of Swift and iOS programming, it’s time to take your skills to the next level. In this follow up work to the best-selling Beginning iPhone Development with Swift, you’ll learn tips for organizing and debugging Swift code, using multi-threaded programming with Grand Central Dispatch, passing data between view controllers, and designing apps for multiple languages.

.iOS 10 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics 1st Edition

Move into iOS development by getting a firm grasp of its fundamentals, including the Xcode IDE, the Cocoa Touch framework, and Swift 3—the latest version of Apple’s acclaimed programming language. With this thoroughly updated guide, you’ll learn Swift’s object-oriented concepts, understand how to use Apple’s development tools, and discover how Cocoa provides the underlying functionality iOS apps need to have.

If you’re looking to make an iOS app, and you want to learn how to do it properly this is book the perfect foundation. That being said, it won’t teach you how to make an app. The FOCUS here is really learning Swift fundamentals (with some iOS basics), so that you can get a good grasp of the underlying language and then buy another book, etc, to actually learn how to build an app.

For what it’s intended to be, this book does an amazing job.

.Learning Swift: Building Apps for macOS, iOS, and Beyond 3rd Edition

Get valuable hands-on experience with Swift, the open source programming language developed by Apple. With this practical guide, skilled programmers with little or no knowledge of Apple development will learn how to code with the latest version of Swift by developing a working iOS app from start to finish.

swift, apple, book, best, books

The book is well done, and the only reason it isn’t 5-star for me is that 2/3 of the book shows how to write iOS apps. The book is written for the typical Apple app developer, and most of them are only interested in iOS development. If you want to learn many of the fine details of writing apps for your Mac, look someplace else. Five stars for iOS, three for MacOS, I’ll compromise on four

.iOS 10 in Swift 3

iOS 10 in Swift 3 will take you from absolute beginner to functional iOS developer learning the concepts, techniques, and tools needed to build professional iOS applications using Xcode 8, iOS 10, and Swift 3. After completing this book, you will have the skills and confidence you need to to build and design your own iOS apps and apply for jr. iOS development jobs.

Good things I like about this book:

  • The book is well written in easy language. If you have read until this part of my review, you would probably notice that I am not a native English speaker. But I have faced no difficulty in reading this book so far. The authors explain the concepts in layman terms and they are easy to understand. And I have zero background in coding. So, if I can read it, you guys can read it for sure.
  • The paperback version is not heavy. I got the paperback version because I prefer highlighting and writing on the book as I read the book. Yes, the book is as thick as a dictionary. But it impressed me because it’s not as heavy as a dictionary. You can bring this book to cafes and NO, you can’t use it as a barbell for workout.
  • Well organised and presented content Yes, there are 1000 pages. But it doesn’t give you a hard time to read. The text is double line spaced, and there are screenshots, pictures, diagrams to explain the content. Unlike most books that compress a lot of information into thick paragraphs, this book is a user-friendly one.

.Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (2nd Edition)

Through the authors’ carefully constructed explanations and examples, you will develop an understanding of Swift grammar and the elements of effective Swift style. This book is written for Swift 3.0 and will also show you how to navigate Xcode 8 and get the most out of Apple’s documentation.

There are a lot of new Swift books and authors, but this book has the backing of Big Nerd Ranch.

If you’re not familiar with Big Nerd Ranch history, they have been involved in Cocoa (and before that AppKit) development and training for probably two decades. Their classes are legendary for the quality and what you bring away from them. This book is no different.

.Swift: The Complete Guide for Beginners,Intermediate and Advanced Detailed Strategies To Master Swift Programming

Whether you are an experienced programmer or just starting out in iOS app design, this book takes you through all the steps of designing an iOS app. If you want to learn how to create outstanding apps that will beat your competitor, this book helps you discover the secret. From Xcode and Swift, the foundation of modern iOS development, you will learn the building blocks of designing a great app so that you can dig deep into the app development.

This book is a clear instruction that is broken into one with central issues on each. The book is somewhat more costly than most, yet it the best I have perused so far. This book has clear directions which are broken into areas with central matters on each. This book has clear guidelines which are broken into areas with primary concerns on each.

.Classic Computer Science Problems in Swift: Essential Techniques for Practicing Programmers 1st Edition

Classic Computer Science Problems in Swift deepens your Swift language skills by exploring foundational coding techniques and algorithms. As you work through examples in search, clustering, graphs, and more, you’ll remember important things you’ve forgotten and discover classic solutions to your new problems. You’ll appreciate author David Kopec’s amazing ability to connect the core disciplines of computer science to the real-world concerns of apps, data, performance, and even nailing your next job interview!

There’s a good blend of object-oriented, functional and protocol-oriented examples presented in the book. Building reusable framework code is reinforced throughout the book. There are numerous examples of advanced Swift features such as generics and protocol extensions. Playground code is provided for each chapter that is well-documented, easy to read and thoroughly explained in the book.

.Swift in Depth 1st Edition

Swift in Depth guides you concept by concept through the skills you need to build professional software for Apple platforms, such as iOS and Mac; also on the server with Linux. By following the numerous concrete examples, enlightening explanations, and engaging exercises, you’ll finally grok powerful techniques like generics, efficient error handling, protocol-oriented programming, and advanced Swift patterns. Author Tjeerd in ‘t Veen reveals the high-value, difficult-to-discover Swift techniques he’s learned through his own hard-won experience.

This book is basicly the same as ObjcIO’s Advanced Swift or the Swift language book by Apple. It does not necessarily contain anything Cocoa[ Touch ], it’s Swift language centric book, and though I say it’s the same, it’s not, even though these books cover the same type of knowledge the point of view is subjective and each authors’. I have all these 3 books on my iPad together with a similar book by Paul Hudson, I forget the name at the moment. One thing that is reflected in each book is each author’s personal experience, and these different experiences make more of these books have a higher value combined as a synergy than the sum of all the books’ core knowledge alone.

.Beginning iOS 12 Swift App Development: Develop iOS Apps with Xcode 10, Swift 4, Core ML 2, ARKit 2 and more Paperback – February 17, 2019

In this book, we take you on a fun, hands-on and pragmatic journey to learning iOS12 application development using Swift. You’ll start building your first iOS app within minutes. Every section is written in a bite-sized manner and straight to the point as I don’t want to waste your time (and most certainly mine) on the content you don’t need. In the end, you will have the skills to create an app and submit it to the app store.

Greg’s book is really THAT good. What I’ve been doing with the projects in this book, after working thru the chapter and creating the project, I then proceed to create additional iterations of the project, adding my own tweaks in the various iterations, and PROVING to myself that I really have mastered the material and can now move on.

.Design Patterns in Swift 5: Learn how to implement the Gang of Four Design Patterns using Swift 5. Improve your coding skills. (Swift Clinic) Paperback – March 26, 2019

Design patterns are the result of a long evolution process. It all started with a book published in 1994. yes, it’s that old! called “Design Patterns. Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.” That’s a quite tedious title, so we usually refer to it as “the book by the gang of four.” The gang consists of four renowned software engineers: Erich Gamma, Ralph Johnson, Richard Helm, and John Vlissides. They identified the most significant common issues that occurred in multiple projects and developed best practices to solve them.

This is the best book I have seen on design patterns for iOS and it’s not afraid to discuss and show concurrency. The discussion is precise and compact, but discusses the most important things, like concurrent barrier queue to make the Singleton pattern thread safe.

.Mastering Swift 5: Deep dive into the latest edition of the Swift programming language, 5th Edition Paperback – April 30, 2019

Inside this book, you’ll find the key features of Swift 5 easily explained with complete sets of examples. From the basics of the language to popular features such as concurrency, generics, and memory management, this definitive guide will help you develop your expertise and mastery of the Swift language.

The best thing about this book is it is written to teach the Swift language itself and is not solely focused on iOS programming so 99% of the material can be applied to iOS development, MacOS Development and also Server Side Swift.

.iOS 12 Programming for Beginners: An introductory guide to iOS app development with Swift 4.2 and Xcode 10, 3rd Edition Paperback – December 24, 2018

If you’re already an experienced programmer, you can jump right in and learn the latest iOS 12 features. For beginners, this book starts by introducing you to iOS development as you learn Xcode and Swift. You’ll also study advanced iOS design topics, such as gestures and animations, to give your app the edge. You’ll explore the latest Swift 4.2 and iOS 12 developments by incorporating new features, such as the latest in notifications, custom-UI notifications, maps, and the recent additions in Sirikit. The book will guide you in using TestFlight to quickly get to grips with everything you need to get your project on the App Store.

.From Zero to iOS Hero: Swift Development for Kids and Teens

This product was amazing! I enjoyed the extent to which the author went to explain the examples, and the concepts behind the language and projects. I really feel as though the book did a lot to help me develop some working knowledge of xCode and Swift.

This book is so easy to follow, and understand. It teaches you the interface, the tools, and builds on your base of knowledge and gets harder as you go. It includes pictures, and code examples that allow everyone to succeed.

.High Performance iOS Apps: Optimize Your Code for Better Apps 1st Edition

Ready to build mobile apps that out-perform the rest? If you’re an iOS developer with app-building experience, this practical guide provides tips and best practices to help you solve many common performance issues. You’ll learn how to design and optimize iOS apps that deliver a smooth experience even when the network is poor and memory is low.

.Swift Development Documentation

Swift is friendly to new programmers. It’s an industrial-quality programming language that’s as expressive and enjoyable as a scripting language. Writing Swift code in a playground lets you experiment with code and see the results immediately, without the overhead of building and running an app.

.Beginning iPhone Development with Swift 5: Exploring the iOS SDK 5th ed. Edition

Beginning iPhone Development with Swift 5 covers the basic information you need to get up and running quickly to turn your great ideas into working iOS apps. Once you’re ready, move on to Pro iPhone Development with Swift 5 to learn more of the really unique aspects of iOS programming and the Swift language.

.iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (6th Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides) 6th Edition

Throughout the book, the authors explain what’s important and share their insights into the larger context of the iOS platform. You get a real understanding of how iOS development works, the many features that are available, and when and where to apply what you’ve learned.

Best programming book I’ve ever learned from. I’ve purchased a few books in the past for learning Java, but none were written as fluently and as effectively as this one.

.iOS Apprentice: Beginning iOS development with Swift 4.2

In this book, you will learn how to make your own iPhone and iPad apps, through four engaging, epic-length tutorials.

These hands-on tutorials describe in full detail how to build a new app from scratch. Four tutorials, four apps. Each new app will be a little more advanced than the one before, and together they cover everything you need to know to make your own apps.

This is a perfect book for beginners. Writer walks you through step by step and tries his best to explain all the concepts cover in a detailed manner. What I like most about this book is that writer is kind enough to repeat or emphasize some important concepts. I loved this book and would recommend to anyone starting iOS journey.

.Swift Apprentice: Beginning programming with Swift 4.2

In this book, 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; you’ll have a firm understanding of Swift by the end of this book, and you’ll be ready to move on to whichever app platform you’re interested in.

.Advanced iOS App Architecture (First Edition): Real-world app architecture in Swift

This book is for intermediate iOS developers who already know the basics of iOS and are looking to build apps using defined architectures, making apps cleaner and easier to maintain.

Excellent Free Books to Learn Swift

Swift is a powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language for the OS X, iOS, watchOS, and Linux operating systems. It’s developed by Apple Inc. Swift is intended to be more resilient to erroneous code (“safer”) than Objective-C, and more concise.

Swift is a new language, first appearing in 2014. It’s friendly to new programmers, feels familiar to Objective-C developers, and the language is optimized for development. It was launched under a proprietary license, but Apple made the language open source in December 2015 by releasing Swift 2.2 and later under the Apache License 2.0. By open-sourcing Swift, developers are able to use the language for their own purposes and go beyond OS X, iOS and watchOS apps.

Besides the official Swift Programming Language book (featured below), there are no other good quality open source Swift books. Given the short passage of time since Apple open sourced the language, this isn’t that surprising. There was an interesting ‘The Swift Book’, which is available under the MIT license, but it is mostly incomplete and updates have stalled. Fortunately, there are some excellent Swift books which can be read without charge which fill the void.

As at August 2019, Swift ranks 18th on the TIOBE Programming Community index, an indicator of the popularity of programming languages.

The FOCUS of this article is to select the finest free Swift books which help programmers master this language, and develop an in-depth understanding of the benefits that this programming language offers. Each book is available to download without payment. Some of the books are available to purchase too.

The Swift Programming Language by Apple Inc.

The Swift Programming Language is the authoritative reference for Swift, offering a guided tour, a comprehensive guide, and a formal reference of the language.

The book is available as a ePub, but there are PDF versions available to download.

This book is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. Unfortunately, the rest of the books featured in this article are not released under an open source license.

Hacking with Swift by Paul Hudson

Hacking with Swift is designed for beginners to intermediate programmers wishing to learn Swift 3 and iOS development with real-world, practical projects. The e-book contains the following projects.

  • Storm Viewer: Get started coding in Swift by making an image viewer app and learning key concepts.
  • Guess the Flag: Make a game using UIKit, and learn about integers, buttons, colors and actions.
  • Social Media: Let users share to and by modifying project 1.
  • Easy Browser: Embed Web Kit and learn about delegation, KVO, classes and UIToolbar.
  • Word Scramble: Create an anagram game while learning about closures and booleans.
  • Auto Layout: Get to grips with Auto Layout using practical examples and code.
  • Whitehouse Petitions: Make an app to parse Whitehouse petitions using JSON and a tab bar.
  • 7 Swifty Words: Build a word-guessing game and master strings once and for all.
  • Grand Central Dispatch: Learn how to run complex tasks in the background with GCD.
  • Names to Faces: Get started with UICollectionView and the photo library.
  • Pachinko: Dive into SpriteKit to try your hand at fast 2D games.
  • UserDefaults: Learn how to save user settings and data for later use.
  • Instafilter: Make a photo manipulation program using Core Image filters and a UISlider.
  • Whack-a-Penguin: Build a game using SKCropNode and a sprinkling of Grand Central Dispatch.
  • Animation: Bring your interfaces to life with animation, and meet switch/case at the same time.
  • JavaScript Injection: Extend Safari with a cool feature for JavaScript developers.
  • Swifty Ninja: Learn to draw shapes in SpriteKit while making a fun and tense slicing game.
  • Debugging: Everyone hits problems sooner or later, so learning to find and fix them is an important skill.
  • Capital Cities: Teach users about geography while you learn about MKMapView and annotations.
  • Fireworks Night: Learn about timers and color blends while making things go bang!
  • Local Notifications: Send reminders, prompts and alerts even when your app isn’t running.
  • Detect-a-Beacon: Learn to find and range iBeacons using our first project for a physical device.
  • Space Race: Dodge space debris while you learn about per-pixel collision detection.
  • Swift Extensions: Try your hand at improving the built-in data types of Swift.
  • Selfie Share: Make a multi-peer photo sharing app in just 150 lines of code.
  • Marble Maze: Respond to device tilting by steering a ball around a vortex maze.
  • Core Graphics: Draw 2D shapes using Apple’s high-speed drawing framework.
  • Secret Swift: Save user data securely using the device keychain and Touch ID.
  • Exploding Monkeys: Remake a classic DOS game and learn about destructible terrain and scene transitions.
  • Instruments: Become a bug detective and track down lost memory, slow drawing and more.
  • Multibrowser: Get started with UIStackView and see just how easy iPad multitasking is.
  • SwiftSearcher: Add your app’s content to Spotlight search and take advantage of the new Safari integration.
  • What’s that Whistle?: Build a crowd-sourced song recognition app using Apple’s free platform as a service. CloudKit.
  • Four in a Row: Let iOS take over the AI in your games using GameplayKit.
  • Generating random numbers: GameplayKit can help you generate random numbers in ways you soon won’t be able to live without.
  • Crashy Plane: Ever wanted to make a Flappy Bird clone? Now you can do it in under an hour thanks to SpriteKit.
  • Psychic Tester: Are you psychic? Of course not. But what if we could use our coding skills to make a game to fool your friends into thinking otherwise?
  • GitHub Commits: Get on board with Core Data and learn to read, write and query objects using Apple’s object graph and persistence framework.
  • Unit testing with XCTest: Learn how to write unit tests and user interface tests using Xcode’s built-in testing framework.

This book is not released under an open source license.

Learn Swift by Aidan Finn

Swift is a wonderful language that gives you an easy entry-point into the Apple developer ecosystem. If you’ve been put off developing for OS X and iOS because of the need to learn Objective-C, now is the time to start.

Swift offers a relatively smooth transition from languages like Ruby and Python. This short book offers you a whirlwind tour of Swift. The aim of this book is to quickly and succinctly introduce and demonstrate all the major features of the Swift programming language.

  • Running Code – create a simple hello world program and run it in Swift.
  • Basics – sets out some of the basics of Swift.
  • Constants and Variables.
  • Static Typing and Type Inference – with reference to the benefits of static typing.
  • Arrays.
  • Dictionaries – learn how to perform some common operations on dictionaries.
  • Tuples – a brief look at this ordered list of elements.
  • Control Flow – if, loops, switch, altering control.
  • Optionals – declaring, forced unwrapping, conditional unwrapping, using optionals, and dictionaries.
  • Functions and Closures – defining and more.
  • Classes – introduces classes, showing you how to define a class, methods, properties: stored and computed, lazy stored properties, property callbacks, subscripts, object initialization, deinitialization, inheritance, and more.
  • Structures – highlights the differences between structures and classes.
  • Enumerations – defining and using, raw values, associated values, associates values versus raw values, pattern matching with switch.
  • Protocols – defining and conforming to a protocol.
  • Extensions – defining extensions.
  • Memory Management – highlights where you may need to get involved in the memory management of objects manually.
  • Error handling – try, catch and throws, assertions, enums.
  • Generics – a way of defining functions or types that can work with multiple different data types.
  • What next? – some resources for building iOS or OS X apps in Swift.

Best Books to Learn Swift Programming in 2020 Beyond

It took years to create Swift programming language and since its inception, it continues to evolve with new features and capabilities. Often referred to as “Objective-C without the C”, you can consider this language as a superior to Objective-C in many aspects. In this blog, we will be highlighting the basics of Swift and the Best Books To Learn Swift Programming In 2020 Beyond.

Swift is basically a compiled programming language created for iOS, tvOS, macOS, watchOS and Linux apps. It is an object-oriented, general-purpose, multi-paradigm, imperative, block-structured and functional language. This programming language was created by Apple using a modern approach for software design patterns and safety.

Soon after its arrival, Swift became one of the top programming languages among the Apple Developer Community replacing the old school Objective-C. It gained its popularity because of some of its features that were hard to match. These include:

  • It is very easy to read or maintain
  • Highly scalable
  • Concise
  • Secure
  • Improved performance
  • Automatic memory management
  • Cross-device support

Now let’s dive into the top books that can help you learn Swift Programming Language.

Best Swift Programming Language Books

Pro iPhone Development with Swift 5

If you think you are already familiar with the Swift programming language or the iOS SDK then get ready to take your skill to a higher level with this book. If you know the basics of Swift or iOS programming then this is one of the best books that will help you up your Swift programming skills and knowledge.

It is a book that is referred to as a follow up of the bestseller called “Beginning iPhone Development with Swift” and will help you learn all the tips and tricks related to debugging and organizing Swift code, passing data between view controllers, using multi-threaded programming with Grand Central Dispatch and designing applications for multiple languages.

iOS 10 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics 1st Edition

Learn all the fundamentals of iOS development along with the Cocoa Touch framework, Xcode IDE and the latest version of Swift. This thoroughly updated guide on Swift programming will teach you about object-oriented concepts, the right way of using Apple development tools and finding out underlying functionality required by iOS apps from Cocoa.

This is also a perfect book if you are seeking to create an iOS application by learning the right way to do it. Though this book will not teach you how to build an application in iOS but will explain to you all the fundamentals along with the basics of iOS. It will help you understand all the basics underlying Swift language. I find this book one of the best books for learning Swift programming from the basics.

Learning Swift: Building Apps for macOS, iOS, and Beyond- 3rd Edition

This practical guide will be a good fit for you to have a valuable hands-on experience of the open-source programming language, Swift. “Learning Swift” will help you to code with the latest version of Swift by developing a functioning iOS application from scratch.

It works for everyone, whether you are a skilled programmer or a programmer with little or no knowledge. The two-third of this book is dedicated to explaining how to write iOS applications. This book is basically for a typical Apple developer who is mostly interested in iOS development.

iOS 10 in Swift 3

This book will help you to transform your skills from absolute beginners’ level to functional iOS developer. It explains all the concepts, tools and techniques that are required by any typical Apple developer for building professional iOS applications using iOS 10, Swift 3 and Xcode 8. Upon completion of this book, you will have all the skills and confidence needed to design and build your own iOS applications.

Some of the best things about this book were:

I always prefer the paperback version as it is good for writing and highlighting on the book. You are right, this book is thick as a dictionary, and however, it is not as heavy.

This book includes over 1000 pages of content that don’t give you a hard time while reading. The content is so well organized that all the text is double line spaced, includes diagrams, pictures, screenshot, and others for explaining the content. Contrary to other similar books, it doesn’t include long boring paragraphs or the important information cramped up in a few lines. This book is more of a reader-friendly with proper paragraphs having well-illustrated content.

It is a perfect book for you if you are not a native speaker of English. Unlike many books that include typical English and complicated phrases, it includes simple words and easy-to-understand English. The authors did a good job in explaining all the terms and concepts in layman terms. You can even read it if you have zero knowledge of coding.

Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide- 2nd Edition

This book will help you develop a complete understanding of grammar related to Swift and all the elements of an effective Swift style with all the carefully constructed examples and explanations.

over, this book has also managed to get the backing of Big Nerd Ranch. To all of you who are not familiar with the Big Nerd Ranch, then they have been involved in Cocoa training and development for probably 2 decades. And this book serves justice to their backing.

Swift: The Complete Guide for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Detailed Strategies To Master Swift Programming

It will allow you to go through all the steps and processes for designing iOS applications and is suitable for everyone. Whether you are a skilled programmer or just the newbie who has started programming, it will be a perfect fit for you to learn different ways of creating exclusive iOS applications by uncovering all the secrets. You will learn all the building blocks of designing a great app such as Xcode, Swift, and others by digging deep into the application development.

In this complete guide on Swift programming, you will find clear instructions broken into central issues of each. Though it is more costly than any other book of its kind, it is also one of the best. It includes clear instructions and guidelines that are simplified into primary areas of concern.

Classic Computer Science Problems in Swift: Essential Techniques for Practicing Programmers 1st Edition

This book helps you to deepen your skills in Swift programming by explaining to you all the foundational coding techniques and algorithms. It will help you remember important things that you have forgotten while exploring examples in search, clustering, graphs and so much more. Classic Computer Science Problems in Swift will also help you in discovering classic solutions for all your complicated and new problems. The author has been successful in connecting the core concepts of computer science to real-world issues related to applications, performance, data, and even job interviews.

This book includes a great blend of protocol-oriented, object-oriented and functional examples. over, you are also enforced to build a reusable framework code along with several examples of features related to advanced Swift that includes protocol extensions and generics. Even the playground code is included for each chapter that is simple-to-read, well-documented and thoroughly explained.

Swift in Depth- 1st Edition

If you want something that guides you through all the skills in a concept-by-concept way for building your professional software related to Apple platforms like Mac or iOS then it is the book you desire. It will also help you in working on a server with Linux. Swift in Depth includes several enlightening explanations, concrete explanations and exciting exercise that will help you in learning all the powerful techniques like efficient error handling, generics, advanced Swift patterns and protocol-oriented programming in no time. Its author Tjeerd Veen shows all the difficulties to discover Swift techniques that he understood the hard way in the simplest form.

Beginning iOS 12 Swift App Development: Develop iOS Apps with Xcode 10, Swift 4, Core ML 2, ARKit 2 and more

Beginning iOS 12 and Swift App Development will take you on a hands-on, fun and pragmatic journey of learning iOS 12 app development using Swift programming language. Upon completing this book, you’ll be able to build your first application within minutes. This book is very lucid, to the point and content is written in a bite-sized manner that will not waste your valuable time. Till the time you finish this book, you’ll gain all the skills required for you to create an application and its submission to the Apple store.

iOS Apprentice: Beginning iOS development with Swift 4.2

This iOS apprentice book will teach you to make your own iPad and iPhone apps with its 4 epic-length and engaging tutorials. All hands-on tutorials are described in full detail on building a new iOS-based application from scratch. Its four tutorials cover 4 different applications that are way different from each other. Every next application is more advanced than the previous one. When learned together, they cover everything that is required to create your own apps.

Furthermore, if you are a beginner then you will love this book as the author walks you through all the concepts in a step-by-step manner by covering everything in a detailed manner. Also, the author of this book is kind enough to emphasize or repeat certain concepts for complete learning.

Mastering Swift 5: Deep dive into the latest edition of the Swift programming language- 5th Edition

Mastering Swift 5 includes all the key features of Swift 5 that are explained in detail with the complete sets of examples. From the basics to the popular features of Swift programming such as generics, concurrency, and memory management, this book will help you gain expertise and all the skills related to Swift programming.

One of the best parts that I loved about this book is that it is not solely focused on iOS programming but revolves more around Swift language. This is beneficial as 99% of all the knowledge gained from this book can be used for iOS related, MacOS and Server Side Swift developments.

iOS 12 Programming for Beginners: An introductory guide to iOS app development with Swift 4.2 and Xcode 10- 3rd Edition

If you are a beginner then this book will unfold with the basic introduction of iOS development and as you progress, it will give you insights into Xcode and Swift. In case, if you are already an experienced programmer then you can jump ahead to learn all the latest iOS 12 features.

It will also give you insights on advanced topics on iOS design such as animations and gestures that will give your app an extra edge over others. “iOS 12 Programming for Beginners” is a great book for exploring all the new Swift 4.2 and iOS 12 developments by implementing new features. These include custom UI notifications, latest in notifications, maps, and Sirikit.

From Zero to iOS Hero: Swift Development for Kids and Teens

Since the time I read it, I found this book amazing. The best part was the extent to which the author explained all the concepts behind the language and projects along with all the examples. It really helped me a lot to develop some working knowledge of Swift and Xcode.

It is very easy to understand and follow all the concepts. Not only this but “From Zero to iOS Hero” teaches you all the tools, the interface and builds apart from all the base of your knowledge. It gets harder and more challenging as you progresses. This book includes all the code examples and pictures that really make learning very easy.

High-Performance iOS Apps: Optimize Your Code for Better Apps 1st Edition

Do you want to build iOS-based applications that have the potential to outperform rest? If yes then this practical guide is a perfect solution for your need. If you are an app developer with prior knowledge of creating applications then this guide will provide you all the top practices and tips that will help you solve many of your common performance issues related to applications. High-performance iOS apps will not only teach you to design the apps but also help you in optimizing your iOS apps that will deliver a super smooth experience even in case of low or poor network.

Swift Development Documentation

Swift programming is very friendly to new programmers and is also a programming language of industrial-quality that is equally enjoyable and expressive just like any scripting language. Though this resource is not a book but is a guide that will help you to test your experiments with code. You can see your results immediately without the headache of building or running an iOS application.

Wrapping Up!

It’s no doubt that today, Swift programming language has become one of the most popular and widely-used languages for iOS related developments. It provides several features along with its simplicity and easy-to-learn nature that attracts a huge number of programmers from all over the world. In this article, I have listed down some of the best books that really helped me to learn and sharpen my Swift programming language.

I hope that you will find this list useful and begin with all these books to explore one of the easiest yet essential programming languages for Apple-related programming. If you think we have missed out on any books that are worth mentioning then do comment in the below section.

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Mastering Swift

Ever since I was 12 years old and wrote my first program in the basic programming language, programming has been a passion for me. Even as programming became my career, it always remained more of a passion than a job, but over the past few years, that passion has waned. I was unsure why I was losing that passion. I attempted to recapture it with some of my side projects but nothing really brought back the excitement that I used to have. Then, something wonderful happened, Apple announced Swift. Swift is such an exciting and progressive language that it has brought a lot of that passion back and made programming fun for me again.

In this chapter, you will learn:

  • What is Swift?
  • What are some of the features of Swift?
  • What are Playgrounds?
  • How do you use Playgrounds?
  • What are the basic syntaxes of the Swift language?

What is Swift?

Swift is Apple’s new programming language that was introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference ( WWDC ) in 2014 alongside the integrated development environment Xcode 6 and iOS 8. Swift was arguably the most significant announcement at WWDC 2014 and very few people, including Apple insiders, were aware of the project’s existence prior to it being announced. It was amazing, even by Apple’s standards, that they were able to keep Swift a secret for as long as they did and that no one suspected they were going to announce a new development language.

Swift can be thought of as Objective-C reimagined using modern concepts and safe programming patterns. In Apple’s own words, Swift is like Objective-C without the C. Chris Lattner, the creator of Swift, said Swift took language ideas from Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and far too many others to list.

At WWDC 2014, Apple really stressed that Swift was Safe by Default. Swift is designed to eliminate many common programming errors, making applications more secure and less prone to bugs. As we look at Swift throughout this book, we will point out many ways in which Swift is safer than not only Objective-C, but also safer than most other modern languages.

The development of Swift started in 2010 by Chris Lattner. He implemented much of the basic language structure with only a few people being aware of its existence. It wasn’t until late 2011 that other developers began to really contribute to Swift, and in July of 2013, it became a major FOCUS of the Apple Developer Tools group.

Chris Lattner started at Apple in the summer of 2005. He has held several positions in the Developers Tools group and is currently the Director and Architect of that group. On his home page (http://www.nondot.org/sabre/), Chris notes that Xcode’s Playground (more on Playgrounds a little later in this chapter) became a personal passion of his because it makes programming more interactive and approachable. We will be using Playgrounds a lot in the book as a test and experimentation platform.

There are a lot of similarities between Swift and Objective-C. Swift adopts the readability of Objective-C’s named parameters and dynamic object model. Swift also provides seamless access to existing Cocoa frameworks. This gives Objective-C developers a certain amount of familiarity when they begin to learn Swift.

While there are a lot of similarities between Swift and Objective-C, there are also significant differences between them as well. Swift’s syntax and formatting are a lot closer to Python than Objective-C, but Apple did keep the curly braces. I know Python people would disagree with me, and that is alright because we all have different opinions, but I like the curly braces. Swift actually makes the curly braces required for control statements, such as if and while. and eliminating bugs such as the Goto Fail bug in Apple’s SSL library.

Mix and match allows us to create applications that contain both Objective-C and Swift files that can communicate with each other. This allows us to systematically update current Objective-C applications with Swift classes. It also allows us to use current Objective-C libraries/frameworks in our Swift applications.

Tip

Mix and match lets Objective-C and Swift files coexist in the same project. This allows us to begin using Swift without throwing away our existing Objective-C code base or projects.

Swift was also built to be fast. At WWDC 2014, Apple showed a number of benchmarks that showed Swift significantly outperformed Objective-C. Swift uses the LLVM compiler, which is included with Xcode 6 to transform the Swift code into highly optimized native code that is tuned to get the most out of Apple’s modern hardware.

If you are an iOS or OS X developer and you are still not convinced that learning Swift is a good idea, then maybe this one paragraph from Apple’s Swift page (https://developer.Apple.com/swift/) will help convince you:

Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages. It includes low-level primitives such as types, flow control, and operators. It also provides object-oriented features such as classes, protocols, and generics, giving Cocoa and Cocoa Touch developers the performance and power they demand.

The first line in that paragraph that says, Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages is the most important line. This line and other Apple documentation tells us that Apple sees the Swift language as its application and systems programming language of the future. While Objective-C is not going away anytime soon, it sounds like it will be taking a backseat to Swift in the very near future.

Swift features

When Apple said that Swift is Objective-C without the C, they are really only telling us half of the story. Objective-C is a superset of C and provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime to the C language. This meant that Apple needed to maintain compatibility with C, which limited the enhancements it could make to the Objective-C language. As an example, Apple could not change how the switch statement functioned and still maintains the C compatibility.

Since Swift does not need to maintain the same C compatibility of Objective-C, Apple was free to add any feature/enhancement to the language. This allowed Apple to include the best features from many of today’s most popular and modern languages, such as Objective-C, Python, Java, Ruby, C#, Haskell, and many others.

The following chart shows a list of some of the most exciting enhancements that Swift includes:

Swift can automatically deduce the type of the variable or constant based on the initial value.

Generics allow us to write code once to perform identical tasks for different types of objects.

swift, apple, book, best, books

Swift does not have separate objects for mutable or non-mutable containers. Instead, you define mutability by defining the container as a constant or a variable.

Closures are self contained blocks of functionality that can be passed around and used in our code.

Optionals define a variable that might not have a value.

The Switch statement has been drastically improved. This is one of my favorite improvements.

Functions can have multiple return types using tuples.

Classes can provide their own implementation of existing operators.

Before we begin our journey into the wonderful world of Swift development, let’s take a detour and visit a place that I have loved ever since I was a kid: The playground.

Playgrounds

When I was a kid, the best part of the school day was going to the playground. It really did not matter what we were playing as long as we were on the playground, I knew it would be fun. When Apple introduced Playgrounds as part of Xcode 6, I was excited just by the name, but I wondered if Apple could make its Playground as fun as the playgrounds from my youth. While Apple’s Playgrounds might not be as fun as playing kickball when I was nine years old, it definitely brings a lot of fun back to experimenting and playing with code.

Getting started with Playgrounds

Playgrounds are an interactive work environment that lets us write code and see the results immediately in the sidebars. As changes are made to the code, the results in the sidebar also change in real time. This means that Playgrounds are a great way to learn and experiment with Swift.

Playgrounds also make it incredibly easy to try out new APIs, prototype new algorithms, and demonstrate how code works. We will be using Playgrounds throughout this book to show how our sample code works. Therefore, before we really get into Swift development, let’s spend some time learning and getting comfortable with Playgrounds.

If the Swift code does not make a lot of sense right now, do not worry; as we go through the book, this code will begin to make sense. We are simply trying to get a feel of Playgrounds right now.

A Playground has three sections, as follows:

  • Coding Area : This is where you enter your Swift code.
  • Results Sidebar : This is where the results of your code are shown. Each time you type in a new line of code, the results are re-evaluated and the results sidebar is updated with the new results.
  • Timeline Sidebar : This sidebar displays various objects depending on what your code does. Later in this chapter, we will show you how to display an image in the timeline sidebar.

The following screenshot shows how the sections are arranged in a Playground:

Let’s start a new Playground. The first thing we need to do is to start Xcode. Once Xcode has started, we can select the Get started with a playground option, as shown in the following screenshot:

Alternatively, we can navigate to File | New | Playground from the top menu bar, as shown in the following screenshot:

Next, we should see a screen similar to the following screenshot that lets us name our Playground and select whether the Playground is an iOS or OS X Playground. For most of the examples in this book, it is safe to assume that you can select either iOS or OS X unless it is otherwise noted.

Finally, we are asked for the location to save our Playground too. After we select the location, the Playground will open up and look similar to the following screenshot:

From the preceding screenshot, we can see that the coding area of the Playground looks like the coding area for an Xcode project. What is different is the sidebar on the right-hand side. This sidebar is where the results of our code are shown. The code in the previous screenshot imports iOS’s UIKit framework and sets a variable named str to the string Hello, playground. You can see the content of the str string in the sidebar to the right of the code.

By default, a new Playground does not open the timeline sidebar. You can open it manually by pressing the Command. Option. and Enter keys together. We will show you why the timeline sidebar is so important later in this chapter.

iOS and OS X Playgrounds

When you start a new iOS Playground, the Playground imports UIKit (Cocoa Touch). This gives us access to the UIKit framework that provides the core infrastructure for iOS applications. When we start a new OS X Playground, the Playground imports Cocoa. This gives us access to the OS X Cocoa framework.

What the last paragraph means is, if we want to experiment with specific features of either UIKit or Cocoa, we need to open the correct Playground. As an example, if we have an iOS Playground open and we want to create an object that represents a color, we would use a UIColor object. If we had an OS X playground open, we would use an NSColor object to represent a color.

Showing images in a Playground

As you will see throughout this book, Playgrounds are great at showing the results of code as text in the results sidebar. Playgrounds can also do a lot more than just text; they can also do images, graphs, and display views. Let’s take a look at how we would show an image in a Playground. The first thing we need to do is to load the image into the resource directory of our Playground. The following steps show how to load an image into the resource directory:

  • Let’s begin by showing the project navigator sidebar. To do this, in the top menu bar navigate to View | Navigators | Show Project Navigator, or you can use the Command-1 keyboard shortcut. The project navigator looks like this:

Top 10 Swift Books to read in 2022 | Best Swift Programming Books

These are the top 10 Swift books that will help you learn and implement Swift Programming.

Swift in Depth 1st Edition

by Tjeerd in ‘t Veen

Developing reliable, dependable, system software is a completely different species. Swift has an incredible set of powerful capabilities and can support a wide range of programming styles and methodologies. All you have to do now is roll up your sleeves and dive deep into Swift.

This book teaches you the abilities you’ll need to build professional software for Macintosh platforms including iOS and Mac. You’ll finally grasp powerful techniques like generics, efficient error handling, protocol-oriented programming, and advanced Swift patterns by following the numerous explicit examples, insightful explanations, and entertaining exercises. The author offers the high-value, hard-to-find Swift approaches he’s discovered through his own hard-won experience.

Mastering Swift 5: Deep dive into the latest edition of the Swift programming language

by Jon Hoffman

The essential features of Swift 5 are well presented with entire sets of examples in this book. This comprehensive guide will teach you all you need to know about Swift, from the fundamentals to advanced topics like concurrency, generics, and memory management.

It will show you how to put them to work in your projects. You’ll also learn how to provide copy-on-write support to custom value types and prevent memory management concerns caused by strong reference cycles. Mastering Swift 5, Fifth Edition will provide you with a thorough understanding of some of Swift’s most complex features, such as protocol extensions, error handling, and closures. Later, you’ll learn how to use protocol-oriented programming to develop more flexible and manageable code.

Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (Big Nerd Ranch Guides) 3rd Edition

by Mikey Ward, Matthew Mathias, John Gallagher

Throughout the book, the writers share their Swift insights to guarantee that you realize the hows and whys of Swift and can use that understanding in many circumstances.

After finishing the book, you will have the knowledge and confidence to create your Swift solutions to a wide range of programming difficulties. You will get knowledge of Swift grammar and the aspects of effective Swift style as a result of the writers’ well-written explanations and examples. This book will be going to give an extra edge just because of its simplicity. The programmer or developer will become a PRO in no time.

Swift Cookbook: Over 60 proven recipes for developing better iOS applications with Swift 5.3, 2nd Edition

by Keith Moon, Chris Barker

The book begins with an overview of Swift 5.3’s fundamental building elements and the functionality of Swift constructs. Swift’s decision-making and control structures, as well as advanced features like generics and operators, will also be covered. You’ll then learn how Swift Playgrounds provide an excellent environment for writing, executing, and debugging Swift code. The book will show you how to bundle variables into tuples or sets, sort your data using an array, store key-value pairs with dictionaries, and use property observers as you progress through the chapters.

After reading this book, you will have so many ways to increase your efficiency while developing programs or codes with the help of swift language (5.3)

Learning Swift: Building Apps for macOS, iOS, and Beyond 3rd Edition

by Jon Manning, Paris Buttfield-Addison, Tim Nugent

You’ll starting with Swift programming essentials, including coding principles, before moving on to Xcode programming and its own-made interface composer. Then you’ll construct and customize a basic app for taking, editing, and deleting selfies step by step. You’ll also tune and test the app for performance and maintain its App Store appearance.

Learn how to use Swift, Apple’s open-source programming language. With this practical tutorial, skilled programmers with little or no experience with Apple programming will learn how to cope with the latest version of Swift by constructing a working iOS app from start to finish.

Swift 5 Cheat Sheet: Quick Reference Guide with Simple Examples for Each Topic of Swift Programming Language Kindle Edition

by Amit Chaudhary

This book can be used as a quick reference guide (akin to a cheat sheet) for Swift programming. With only one swipe, you can access any topic inside a chapter. If you are an experienced developer who is familiar with at least one modern programming language, this book will teach you how to conceive and program in Swift. This book is a step-by-step introduction to mastering object-oriented programming using Swift for beginners and novices. Each topic is addressed with clear and short Swift programming language examples utilizing Playground. This book will be a valuable and worthwhile addition to your library.

Swift: The Complete Guide for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Detailed Strategies to Master Swift Programming

by M G Martin

Inside, you’ll find Swift Programming Principles for Beginners, Intermediates, and Advanced. Swift is a programming language that is inventive, secure, and relatively new. There’s no need to suffer any longer. Swift will assist you in developing both iOS8 and OSX apps engagingly and entertainingly. If you’ve worked with Objective-C before, you might be wondering why you’d want to switch to Swift. Whether you’re a seasoned programmer or just starting, this book will walk you through the whole process of creating an iOS app. If you want to understand how to design exceptional apps that will outperform your competitors, this book will guide you through the process.

Swift Programming in easy steps: Develop iOS apps – covers iOS 12 and Swift 5

by Darryl Bartlett

Swift is an easy-to-learn programming language that is more understandable than other programming languages. It enables you to create applications for Apple Inc. users. This course will show you how to create iOS apps from the ground up using Swift 5. There is no prior programming expertise required, and the book will lead you through the entire process of UI design, coding, and uploading your apps to the App Store.

This book includes Firebase, Google’s mobile platform that allows you to add features to your app. There is also a chapter on the sprite-kit that covers everything you need to know to create 2D games. It also includes ARKit code, which enables you to create Augmented Reality experiences for your app’s consumers.

Swift programming: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

by Daniel Bell

The author begins by exposing readers to the Swift programming language’s fundamentals. The goal is to teach the people who created the language how the Swift compiler works. The reader has been instructed on what they need to know to program in Swift. The author begins with the fundamentals of Swift and progresses to a discussion of the programming language’s more sophisticated capabilities. Every chapter has used a step-by-step method to make it easier to understand. Swift’s numerous features, including data types, variables, constants, loops, decision making, functions, operators, object-oriented programming capabilities, and so on, have been thoroughly addressed. The author has divided the book into chapters, with many sub-chapters within each chapter.

Design Patterns in Swift 5

by Karoly Nyisztor

Professional developers are tasked with resolving a variety of issues in many software houses or even in their personal spaces. These issues are frequently the same or comparable to those they’ve faced in previous initiatives. The author discusses the advantages of knowing and utilizing design patterns, as well as the value they give and their limitations. The author then emphasizes or mentions the structural design patterns more effectively. Coding examples that can be used in real-world scenarios are offered throughout the book.

The author discusses behavioral design patterns in the book’s final section, including the Chain of Responsibility, the Iterator, the Observer, and the State design pattern.