Preface

Swift is Apple's new programming language that was introduced at the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 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.

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.

In Apple's own words "Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages"; therefore, it is imperative for iOS and OS X developers who want to keep their skills up to date to not only learn but also master the Swift programming language.

The first five chapters of this book will introduce the reader to the Swift programming language. These chapters will give the reader a solid understanding of the Swift programming language. The remainder of the book will cover more advance topics such as concurrency, network development, and design patterns and will help the reader master the swift programming language.

This book is written in an example-based approach where each topic covered is backed by examples written to reinforce the topic and to show how to implement it within the reader's code.

Since Swift is constantly changing and evolving, the author has started a blog at http://masteringswift.blogspot.com to keep readers up to date with what is new in Swift. The blog will also be used to enhance and expand on the material in the book.