Book Image

Learning Swift Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Andrew J Wagner
Book Image

Learning Swift Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Andrew J Wagner

Overview of this book

Swift is Apple’s new programming language and the future of iOS and OS X app development. It is a high-performance language that feels like a modern scripting language. On the surface, Swift is easy to jump into, but it has complex underpinnings that are critical to becoming proficient at turning an idea into reality. This book is an approachable, step-by-step introduction into programming with Swift for everyone. It begins by giving you an overview of the key features through practical examples and progresses to more advanced topics that help differentiate the proficient developers from the mediocre ones. It covers important concepts such as Variables, Optionals, Closures, Generics, and Memory Management. Mixed in with those concepts, it also helps you learn the art of programming such as maintainability, useful design patterns, and resources to further your knowledge. This all culminates in writing a basic iOS app that will get you well on your way to turning your own app ideas into reality.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning Swift Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

What is a design pattern?


Let's delve a little deeper into what a design pattern is before we dive into the specific patterns. As you may have begun to understand, there are unlimited ways to write a program that does even a simple thing. A design pattern is a solution to solve a recurrent and common problem. These problems are often so ubiquitous, that even if you don't use a pattern deliberately, you will almost certainly be using one or more patterns inadvertently; especially, if you are using third-party code.

To better evaluate the use of design patterns, we will look at three high-level measurements: coupling, cohesion, and complexity.

Coupling is the degree to which individual code components depend on other components. We want to reduce the coupling in our code so that all our code components operate as independently as possible. We want to be able to look at them and understand each component on its own without needing a full understanding of the entire system. Low coupling also allows...