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I think just the fact that you were able to build a game with just 4 hours of learning a new language speaks volumes about Swift's barrier to entry. Well done!
Any up-to-date C# developer already knows Swift.
Author here - I didn't expect to see this here this morning. I'd intended to write a longer post :) In any case, here's a few things I learned about swift yesterday building this. Please note that I have about 4 hours swift experience, so feel free to correct anything I say that's wrong. 1. To make properties on a class you simply declare the variable on the class e.g.: class GameScene: SKScene { var bird = SKSpriteN…
1. Strings, arrays and dictionaries are value types (like structs in C# - stored on stack, not on the heap) with special copying rules for arrays.
2. Custom operators - can be defined as a sequence of "/ = - + * % ! & | ^ . ~" characters and made prefix, infix or postfix. There is an example in the reference that defines a prefix operator "+++" for vectors
Author here - I didn't expect to see this here this morning. I'd intended to write a longer post :) In any case, here's a few things I learned about swift yesterday building this. Please note that I have about 4 hours swift experience, so feel free to correct anything I say that's wrong. 1. To make properties on a class you simply declare the variable on the class e.g.: class GameScene: SKScene { var bird = SKSpriteN…
I think you should type let everywhere, except when you cannot get away with it.
So, it is var when declaring a loop variable. Elsewhere you almost always can introduce a new name. So, instead of
X += 1
let newX = x + 1
If you find yourself creating a newerX, a newestX, etc. you may be better of with a var, but chances also are that you are better of writing your code differently (for example can you iterate over a constant array of values instead of doing x+=1 a few times? If your function needs to create 10+ Local variables, can you factor out a function?)
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And the same, in HTML form: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...
Note that near the top of "A Swift Tour" there is a link to the playground which you can download and open in Xcode 6.
Direct link to the playground file: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...
If Swift has namespaces why are classes still prefixed? "SKScene" for example.
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Heh. Reminds me of when I correct people for if var == true {...} or (and I have actually seen this) if ( == true) { return true; } else { return false; } I sometimes think that simply giving those 5 lines to a person and observing if they make a face like you've handed them a bucket full of day-old fish is a better test for programming aptitude than anything.
I'd argue the second is clearer in many cases. Readability trumps conciseness any day.
return expression;
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What about this? var spawn = SKAction.runBlock self.spawnPipes
Heh. Reminds me of when I correct people for if var == true {...} or (and I have actually seen this) if ( == true) { return true; } else { return false; } I sometimes think that simply giving those 5 lines to a person and observing if they make a face like you've handed them a bucket full of day-old fish is a better test for programming aptitude than anything.
if var == true {...}
However in the strongly typed swift I don't think it will be a problem as I suspect (but haven't read/tested enough yet to confirm) that only false and nil will be falsy and that comparison with true will throw errors if var isn't of bool type.
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I don't have XCode to try it out, but according to the book, you can replace var spawn = SKAction.runBlock({() in self.spawnPipes()}) with var spawn = SKAction.runBlock({self.spawnPipes()}) or even var spawn = SKAction.runBlock() {self.spawnPipes()} or var spawn = SKAction.runBlock {self.spawnPipes()} EDIT: formatting for code
This is awesome and I didn't know this. Thanks for posting it - I don't have much swift experience so I assume there are several things in the code that will be shown to be non-standard.
Considering the language has only been public for <36 hours, I would imagine effectively no one outside of Apple (and its Alpha partners) does.