Book Image

Mastering Swift 2

By : Jon Hoffman
Book Image

Mastering Swift 2

By: Jon Hoffman

Overview of this book

<p><span id="description" class="sugar_field">At their Worldwide Developer’s conference (WWDC) in 2015, Apple announced Swift 2, a major update to the innovative programming language they first unveiled to the world the year before. Swift 2 features exciting enhancements to the original iteration of Swift, acting, as Apple put it themselves as “a successor to the C and Objective-C languages.” – This book demonstrates how to get the most from these new features, and gives you the skills and knowledge you need to develop dynamic iOS and OS X applications.<br /> </span></p> <p><span id="description" class="sugar_field">Learn how to harness the newest features of Swift 2 todevelop advanced applications on a wide range of platforms with this cutting-edge development guide. Exploring and demonstrating how to tackle advanced topics such as Objective-C interoperability, ARC, closures, and concurrency, you’ll develop your Swift expertise and become even more fluent in this vital and innovative language. With examples that demonstrate how to put the concepts into practice, and design patterns and best practices, you’ll be writing better iOS and OSX applications in with a new level of sophistication and control.</span></p>
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Mastering Swift 2
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Taking the First Steps with Swift
2
Learning about Variables, Constants, Strings, and Operators
Index

What are classes and structures?


In Swift, classes and structures are very similar. If we really want to master Swift, it is very important to understand what makes classes and structures so similar and also what sets them apart because they are the building blocks of your applications. Apple describes classes and structures as:

"Classes and structures are general-purpose, flexible constructs that become the building blocks of your program's code. You define properties and methods to add functionality to your classes and structures by using the already familiar syntax of constants, variables, and functions."

Let's begin by taking a quick look at some of the similarities between classes and structures.

Similarities between classes and structures

In Swift, classes and structures are more similar than they are in other languages, such as Objective-C. The following is a list of some of the features that classes and structures share:

  • Properties: These are used to store information in our classes...