Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

This book has the feel of a high school/college textbook, and I found its explanations of the Swift language well written. It only has 2 chapters dealing with SwiftUI and iOS, though, so if you're looking for something focusing on that, as I was, this isn't it. It makes use of XCode's Playground and Command Line Tool (not to be confused with the CLI application Terminal that's installed on all MacOSs) almost exclusively, keeping the clutter to a minimum. Despite lacking SwiftUI, the rest of the book is such great reference material for the vast amount of the concepts, types, functions, what-have-yous of the Swift language, I'm seriously considering buying the Kindle version as a (more understandable) replacement for the oftentimes dense Swift Programming Language written by Apple. Although it won't guide you while making simple apps, I would absolutely recommend this as THE first book with which you should start your journey into Swift.

I’ve been coding professionally for 33 years and have read a few great coding books. This is excellent. Good writing. Good typesetting. Good examples. Makes good use of Xcode playground. I am able to jump around to various chapters and quickly digest how stuff works in Swift. Highly recommend for any professional wishing to learn this language.

Generally the book is very good. Looks like at about chapter 17 some one else started writing. The style changed. Good reference to have though.

The examples used to back up and apply the ideas and concepts were practicable. I really like that they had a website forum to go along with the textbook which I relied on it a lot for doing the challenges at the end of each chapter. I initially started with the follow-up textbook called "iOS programming" but realized it was getting too difficult to do the end-of-chapter challenges. So I got this textbook to help brush up on those areas.

This is my first book from Big Nerd Ranch and my only complaint is I did not find them sooner. It has a fantastic layout and I appreciate how they leave the code you are changing but put a line through it designating it as the changed line. It has a natural progression through the language with increasing steps that are at a slope instead of how some other books or tutorials that make leaps from subject to subject. I also appreciate that the examples remain the same variables through a chapter so it is easier to see what is really changing. And also the multiple challenge levels. As a self taught developer that has learned several languages I would highly encourage anyone to purchase this book and consider Big Nerd Ranch for other pertinent training books. Keep it up Nerds;)

Everthing produced by "The Big Nerd Ranch" is worth the time and money invested.

This is a clear and step by step guide to understanding and coding with Swift. As a bonus, it is tons of fun too.

I have an education in computer science and ten years experience writing code professionally. I bought this book with the expectation that it would give me a functional understanding of Swift that I could use to begin writing software for Apple devices. So far, I have had to resort to online resources to clarify about 1/2 of the material I have covered in the book. The author is fond of using and enjoys highlighting some of the more idiosyncratic features of Swift that allow developers to abbreviate code. While this is interesting and novel, it is frustrating for students. They will benefit more from examples that demonstrate a concept with intuitive (albiet verbose) code than from examples that take advantage of Swift's ability to condense statements. Additionally, material is disorganized and concepts are discussed without having explained the fundamentals necessary to understand them. An example is mentioning overloading an assignment operator within the first couple of chapters when classes and methods are not covered until a dozen chapters later. Yes, you can learn Swift by fumbling through the book. But, you'll experience less frustration by finding and using one of the more organized websites dedicated to the same topic. And while the book is unorganized and often difficult to follow, the author is thorough from an academic stance. But since Swift is one of those languages that gives you enough rope to hang yourself, you're better off learning the basics and running with a functional understanding before you delve off into obscure syntax features that will allow you to abbreviate and obfuscate to the point of illegibility.

I am just going through it now. I recommend this for beginner as well as experts programmer. I am in programming field since last 15 years and now using tis book to learn swift. I already developed some apps but my concept was not clear about closures etc and i hope this book will help me to get those concept clear. Will give my another ev view after year again :)

Complete book, with a whole bunch of examples

This is a good book for starting to learn Swift. However I thought it needed more chapters in Swift UI especially as this seems to be the future of this language.

Cooles Buch, leider wurde es in der Papermülltonne zugestellt

The first part of the book teaches you the basics of Swift without teaching you the language in the context of any possible practical application. From Part five, laughably called "Advanced Swift", the usefulness of the book, plunges steeply downhill. After reading the useful parts of the book (the first two thirds) I've decided that not only is it not worth the money, but I won't ever be buying a Big Nerd Ranch book again. I've been in IT for over 3 decades and I know what good, useful programming language teaching books should contain. This is not one of those books.