Who this book is for

This book is aimed at developers who are interested in learning the Swift programming language, either using the open source version of Swift on Linux or the version bundled with Xcode on OS X. However, after Chapter 1, Exploring Swift, the remainder of the chapters use Xcode features or have iOS examples which can only be used on OS X with Xcode. These chapters show how to write iOS applications on OS X using Swift. No prior programming experience for iOS is assumed, though a basic level of programming experience in a dynamically or statically typed programming language is expected. The reader will be familiar with navigating and using Mac OS X and, in the cases where Terminal commands are required, the developer will have experience of simple shell commands or can pick it up quickly from the examples given.

Developers familiar with Objective-C will know many of the frameworks and libraries mentioned; however, existing knowledge of Objective-C and its frameworks is neither necessary nor assumed.

The sources are provided in a GitHub repository at https://github.com/alblue/com.packtpub.swift.essentials/, and they can be used to switch between the content of chapters using the tags in the repository. Knowledge of Git is helpful if you are wanting to navigate between different versions; alternatively, the web-based interface at GitHub may be used instead. It is highly recommended that the reader becomes familiar with Git as it is the standard version control system for Xcode and the de facto standard for open source projects. The reader is invited to read the Git topics at the author's blog http://alblue.bandlem.com/Tag/git/ if they are unfamiliar and interested in learning more.