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Advanced Swift: Updated for Swift 5
Advanced Swift takes you through Swift's features, from low-level programming to high-level abstractions.
In this book, we'll write about advanced concepts in Swift programming. If you have read the Swift Programming Guide, and want to explore more, this book is for you.
Swift is a great language for systems programming, but also lends itself for very high-level programming. We'll explore both high-level topics (for example, programming with generics and protocols), as well as low-level topics (for example, wrapping a C library and string internals).
In this book, we'll write about advanced concepts in Swift programming. If you have read the Swift Programming Guide, and want to explore more, this book is for you.
Swift is a great language for systems programming, but also lends itself for very high-level programming. We'll explore both high-level topics (for example, programming with generics and protocols), as well as low-level topics (for example, wrapping a C library and string internals).
486 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
68 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 8, 2020
I have proceeded to read the book by highlighting important passages and taking note of them. And it took thirty-five pages for a small size notebook when completed. Maybe this number can comprehend to understand what it matters to reading this book. Otherwise, some of the chapters are basic(I am a four years experienced developer) and boring to read also I can say this book is about much more theory that explains what stands for behind the high-level virtualizations in Swift. Probably it is not going to affect the way of your writing code.
But as in the title, it is aiming to explain advanced topics and when starting to look at this point of view it takes a unique position in iOS Development World. I think it is a must-read.
But as in the title, it is aiming to explain advanced topics and when starting to look at this point of view it takes a unique position in iOS Development World. I think it is a must-read.
August 24, 2018
A decent book, and delivered as expected from the good folks of Objc.io. Per there words, the book were guided mainly by their own topics of interests.
There are many aspects from which you could approach Swift. This book doesn't quite assume or prefix a set of paradigms, but explores many topics that could be utilized by different paradigms and techniques. It does a good job of exploring the standard library, and it takes a step ahead to discuss some useful patterns and best practices, availing itself, just as Swift does, from the vast paradigms of the industry.
If you have read Apple's The Swift Programming Language comprehensively, you'll be familiar with many of bits mentioned of the official library, and then you can go straight to the good bits of the examples and possible applications. If you've just grabbed the quickest tutorial and jumped into Swift, i.e. if you still write Swift-flavoured Objective-C, then you definitely should give this book a good piece of your time.
There are many aspects from which you could approach Swift. This book doesn't quite assume or prefix a set of paradigms, but explores many topics that could be utilized by different paradigms and techniques. It does a good job of exploring the standard library, and it takes a step ahead to discuss some useful patterns and best practices, availing itself, just as Swift does, from the vast paradigms of the industry.
If you have read Apple's The Swift Programming Language comprehensively, you'll be familiar with many of bits mentioned of the official library, and then you can go straight to the good bits of the examples and possible applications. If you've just grabbed the quickest tutorial and jumped into Swift, i.e. if you still write Swift-flavoured Objective-C, then you definitely should give this book a good piece of your time.
August 8, 2019
It's fairly good book if you're doing Swift, but it could have been a bit more.
In short, this book goes over a lot of things in Swift that you might not know about and explains them pretty well. It shows a bunch of cool things and explains some things that you might have easily missed. Which is good.
On the flip side, it doesn't feel "advanced enough". It shows some of the depth of the language, but it could have gone deeper. Yet it's still worth reading.
It deserves an extra -1 star for typesetting in variable width font (that I'm not going to award).
In short, this book goes over a lot of things in Swift that you might not know about and explains them pretty well. It shows a bunch of cool things and explains some things that you might have easily missed. Which is good.
On the flip side, it doesn't feel "advanced enough". It shows some of the depth of the language, but it could have gone deeper. Yet it's still worth reading.
It deserves an extra -1 star for typesetting in variable width font (that I'm not going to award).
July 13, 2017
A deep dive into Swift essential for every serious programmer.
November 23, 2018
Nice overview of some of Swift's main features. Probably won't apply most of the provided info in real-world projects tho. Still an ok book I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
December 16, 2018
Great book to improve your knowledge of swift language. Covered lots of topics that are missing in official book from Apple. Must read for every iOS developer.
January 3, 2019
Great book, really loved how in depth it was.
November 22, 2024
Even in 2024, this is a useful books with many good tips and underlying implementation techniques. I enjoyed every line of it.
April 10, 2016
Solid coverage of most of the trickier features of the Swift programming language. Each chapter focuses on one area — "Collections", "Error Handling", "Generics", Protocols", etc. — and dives into it more deeply than Apple's (also excellent) books do.
Some chapters stay general-purpose and cover the different components and uses of the feature at hand, while others are more example-driven and motivate the use of the feature by setting up a problem and solving it. I tend to prefer the first style (though I know I'm in the minority), but I also found the examples here well-done. Rather than just dumping long code listings, the authors are careful to point out what each piece of code is demonstrating. Some of the later examples, especially the one that converts a standard Java binary-search implementation into a fully generic Swift one, illustrate the important process of learning to _think_ in Swift.
As the title implies, this isn't a book to learn Swift from; start with Apple's free books (on iBooks and at swift.org) which are really very good. _Advanced Swift_ doesn't (as far as I can tell) cover anything that isn't in Apple's books, but it goes into a lot more depth and makes a lot of the advanced areas clearer, so I think anyone who's up and running with Swift but not yet 100% comfortable with it will benefit from it.
Some chapters stay general-purpose and cover the different components and uses of the feature at hand, while others are more example-driven and motivate the use of the feature by setting up a problem and solving it. I tend to prefer the first style (though I know I'm in the minority), but I also found the examples here well-done. Rather than just dumping long code listings, the authors are careful to point out what each piece of code is demonstrating. Some of the later examples, especially the one that converts a standard Java binary-search implementation into a fully generic Swift one, illustrate the important process of learning to _think_ in Swift.
As the title implies, this isn't a book to learn Swift from; start with Apple's free books (on iBooks and at swift.org) which are really very good. _Advanced Swift_ doesn't (as far as I can tell) cover anything that isn't in Apple's books, but it goes into a lot more depth and makes a lot of the advanced areas clearer, so I think anyone who's up and running with Swift but not yet 100% comfortable with it will benefit from it.
May 13, 2016
This book is very technical, but it does provide a good foundation into the advanced features of Swift.
Reader be warned that you'll need to have been clued up Apple's Swift Programming Guide because I felt myself having to jump between that and a few resources on the Internet. This is truly not a bad thing as it gets you to sell out answers.
One of my few gripes is the distinction of code snippets that were meant to serve as what to be done and snippets that were just explanations of what a certain concept was about.
Also the code snippets running over pages was a bit odd, especially for things that sweetness to be 10 lines or less. Most, if not all, of them didn't seem to fill a full page to justify them being awkwardly cut off.
Other the previously mentioned there was no conclusion. It just seemed so sudden an end to a book. If anything it seems more suited in the form of a PDF rather than the paperback I've currently finished.
Reader be warned that you'll need to have been clued up Apple's Swift Programming Guide because I felt myself having to jump between that and a few resources on the Internet. This is truly not a bad thing as it gets you to sell out answers.
One of my few gripes is the distinction of code snippets that were meant to serve as what to be done and snippets that were just explanations of what a certain concept was about.
Also the code snippets running over pages was a bit odd, especially for things that sweetness to be 10 lines or less. Most, if not all, of them didn't seem to fill a full page to justify them being awkwardly cut off.
Other the previously mentioned there was no conclusion. It just seemed so sudden an end to a book. If anything it seems more suited in the form of a PDF rather than the paperback I've currently finished.
March 27, 2016
This book covers all the bases. I think some of the examples could have been better.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews