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Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

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Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#32

Post by i_s »

tkubacki wrote: post #2

I heard from devs Swift 1.0 is still alpha quality (tools) and Apple shouldn't release it. Would you use it for new project?

I wouldn't use it yet for real projects. Even getting the compiler to work can be tricky sometimes. For example, when writing a function with generic argument constraints, I sometimes had to flip the LHS and RHS to get things to compile where it made no logical difference. (e.g., S.Generator.Element == X instead of X == S.Generator.Element).

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#34

Post by simonh »

tkubacki wrote: post #2

I heard from devs Swift 1.0 is still alpha quality (tools) and Apple shouldn't release it. Would you use it for new project?

"apple shouldn't release it" is IMHO clearly wrong. They were absolutely right to release it when they did, at a stage where it was just about stable enough to write working apps but many of the features of the language were still being iterated on. Yes that means the language definition isn't yet stable, but the huge advantage us that iOS devs have the chance to influence the development of the language and it's libraries.

Whether or not it's the write time to use it in production is another separate issues that will depend on the app. For fairly simple applications it seems like it's fine to use it now. There is talk that Apple have banned use of swift within the company. That's obviously false, otherwise they wouldn't be able to further develop the language. I do fully expect that to use swift in a production project you would need high level authorisation and probably close coordination with the swift dev team. That would just make sense.

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#35

Post by soviel »

I'm just wondering about the prerequisites. I see CS106A&B (or X) required & CS107 or CS108 or CS110 also (at a minimum) required. I am especially worried about CS108, Object Oriented Programming. I am a programming hobbyist, not a professional. I have good knowledge of Python and PHP and work with VBA at work. Will I be okay, or should I try to find equivalents of these courses before starting this course?

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#36

Post by austenallred »

soviel wrote: post #35

I'm just wondering about the prerequisites. I see CS106A&B (or X) required & CS107 or CS108 or CS110 also (at a minimum) required. I am especially worried about CS108, Object Oriented Programming. I am a programming hobbyist, not a professional. I have good knowledge of Python and PHP and work with VBA at work. Will I be okay, or should I try to find equivalents of these courses before starting this course?

You should be fine

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#37

Post by troymc »

stasel wrote: post #9

This is by far, the best resource learning to develop for iOS. highly recommended!

It's only two lectures, so far. Maybe wait until the whole course is up before giving a review?

(Stanford has some older iOS programming courses up on iTunes as well. For example, the course "Developing iOS 7 Apps for iPhone and iPad" [1] is 18 lectures.)

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/course/developing-ios-7-apps-for...

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#38

Post by allworknoplay »

Interested folks should check out Bitfountain's incredibly thorough ios8/swift immersive course: http://bitfountain.io/courses/complete-ios8

It's good for first-time or experienced programmers and contains exercises for practically every feature and app style you could want.

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#39

Post by austinz »

soviel wrote: post #35

I'm just wondering about the prerequisites. I see CS106A&B (or X) required & CS107 or CS108 or CS110 also (at a minimum) required. I am especially worried about CS108, Object Oriented Programming. I am a programming hobbyist, not a professional. I have good knowledge of Python and PHP and work with VBA at work. Will I be okay, or should I try to find equivalents of these courses before starting this course?

If you're comfortable writing object-oriented code in Python and PHP, you should be fine. The object-oriented parts of Swift are thoroughly ordinary.

One major concept you will want to become comfortable with (that doesn't really exist in dynamic languages AFAIK) is the concept of protocols: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Swift/...

If you're not comfortable with anonymous functions and closures, I'd recommend getting familiar with them as well, since they play a major role later on in the course.

Re: Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift

#40

Post by soviel »

austinz wrote: post #39
soviel wrote: post #35

I'm just wondering about the prerequisites. I see CS106A&B (or X) required & CS107 or CS108 or CS110 also (at a minimum) required. I am especially worried about CS108, Object Oriented Programming. I am a programming hobbyist, not a professional. I have good knowledge of Python and PHP and work with VBA at work. Will I be okay, or should I try to find equivalents of these courses before starting this course?

If you're comfortable writing object-oriented code in Python and PHP, you should be fine. The object-oriented parts of Swift are thoroughly ordinary. One major concept you will want to become comfortable with (that doesn't really exist in dynamic languages AFAIK) is the concept of protocols: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Swift/... If you're not comfortable with anonymous functions and closures…

Thanks for your reply! I feel better about it.
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