A Swift transition
After years of beating around the bush, weighing the options, researching different technologies, and deleting all of my past Github repos, I’ve decided to choose a lane and started to learn the Swift language.
While testing will always hold a special place in my heart, iOS/macOS development is on track to become my biggest professional challenge yet.
Why am I writing about it? Because writing about my decision to pursue a career in iOS development gives me a sense of accountability, and it is a form of digital journaling (it’s way easier to display my code here than in a physical journal). At the time of publishing this article, I managed to keep a streak of learning Swift for one whole week😳.
What am I using to learn Swift?
Simple. The books about Swift that Apple offers for free in the Books app. So far, I am about 30% into the Swift Fundamentals book.
What have I learned so far?
I’ve started with the basics, I don’t want to get ahead of myself just because I know a tiny bit of JS so here is everything I’ve managed to learn this far:
- Constants, variables, and data types
- Operators
- Control flow
- Debugging
- Strings
- Functions
Some of these topics are way easier than others, but the book makes it an enjoyable learning experience regardless.
Conclusion
With one week in the bag, and as someone who doesn’t think much of himself in the way of programming skills (I’ve flunk CS in highschool a couple of times) I can safely say that this is one of the best ways to start learning Swift. Besides the book, I’ve started listening to podcasts and reading newsletters (even though they cover more complex topics), joined Twitter hashtags and subreddit groups that cover Swift.
All in all this is an amazing experience. I’ve never had so much fun learning a programming language and I’ve never seen such an amazing community. Until next week, keep on learning.
