Just Can't Get It

Using Swift
1

Good day all! I've been trying to learn swift for years but not a single resource I've utilized has been all that useful. I'm looking for any and all options for furthering my education short of actually going back to school. Any courses or chatrooms (still a thing?) that you guys know of would be greatly appreciated. I'm also old school so if there's like a workbook I can download where the problems are written out and I can n=just write them in before typing them that would help immensely.

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Swift Playgrounds on iPad or hackingwithswift.com or stanford's CS193P?

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Have you tried the goal oriented approach?

Something like:

  • write a macOS app that sorts your vacation photos by day
  • write a calculator - but not a fancy UI one, just terminal/console. you type 2+2 and it outputs 4
  • write some small iOS app - there is a tutorial on Apple website, though this kind of requires some basic understanding of Swift. This app may be water counter: how much water did you drink today?
  • automate some thing that you do every day. Do you like comics like xkcd? Write a script that downloads them.

I don't know what is your programming background. Do you know any other programming languages or is Swift the 1st one?

Also, get used to googling every little thing - you are not expected to know everything, most of the things are just a search away. So for example, if I wanted to write this 'sorts your vacation photos by day' app I would google:

  • Swift list files in dir
  • Swift get photo creation date (tip: it is called 'exif data')
  • Swift create directory
  • Swift move file to directory

Usually you will get results from sites like: stack overflow or swift by Sundell. Both are really good.

Though, please remember to back-up you photos before :)

Programming has a huge learning curve, especially if you do it alone. Maybe try to learn with others? Maybe go to a local meet-up (but please remember to follow covid restrictions)?

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For me, The Swift Programming Language guide from official site was the most helpful learning material. You can also download it as eBook from the official website or from iBooks Store.

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I too would recommend Swift Playgrounds. You mention workbooks of problems and Playgrounds on iOS are similar in that they consist of problems and examples, split up into separate pages which you can tackle one by one. You both edit and run the code within the Playground, for instant feedback again like a digital workbook.

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What are the resources you tried but didn't find useful? Mentioning those resources will help people avoid suggesting resources you already tried.

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The official language guide is one of the best-written language tutorials I’ve read.

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