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Show HN: Advanced Swift

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93 pointschriseidhof21 comments

I've read the book (the pre-release and the final release) and it is currently the best Swift book I've read. For a book author, it is probably always difficult to decide which topics to include and which to leave out, and then how much time to spend on a given topic. Advanced Swift does really well here. They explain some of the most-used concepts in Swift in a very detailed way (like Collections, Optionals, Protocols, or Value Types) but also include a couple of advanced topics which you might run into less often, but which are usually complicated and error prone to get right (like using C libraries or String internals). Highly recommended, great book.

Thanks a lot!

In the UK, at least, it's cheaper the buy the paperback book (£27.32) than the digital edition ($46.80; ~£32.50).

Presumably this is because VAT is charged on ebooks but not on physical books.

Interesting. Amazon is a bit unpredictable with pricing. The advantage of the digital edition is that you will get updates whenever we change something. We've done that for the past 1.5 years with the Functional Swift book =).

That is quite an advantage, especially given how quickly Swift is being developed!

Hey HN!

We just finished our book on Advanced Swift, and I think you folks are the perfect crowd. There's also an online preview =). Let me know if you have any questions!

What sets this book apart from Apple's "The Swift Programming Language"?

This book goes WAY deeper into the patterns and corner cases of the current language implementations. Like the title says Advanced Swift, ie the book you should read after reading the book from Apple. It does a fantastic job of explaining not only how you might use the features in swift but the effects and patterns features might cause you to use. I say patterns but it's not a design pattern type of book but a advanced language type of book.

The other comment in this thread explains it really well. Another point of view: Apple's book is targeted at all sorts of developers, from complete novices to people who've written ObjC for two decades. We target advanced developers, and assume that you are already a professional developer. That allows us to dive much deeper!

Found the terminology section in the online preview pretty good, stopped reading there, will buy :)

Are you planning to release some updates sections for Swift 3?

We haven't got a concrete plan yet, but we definitely want to update it for Swift 3.

I'd highly recommend getting the bundle with Core Data - I read Core Data a month ago, and it was, without exaggeration, the most practically helpful programming book I have ever read. The sample project and explanations are saving me days if not weeks of learning things "the hard way". Huge props to the authors.

Thanks for the kind words – glad it was helpful to you!

Just in time for Swift 2.2. Will much material need to change to be 2.2 compliant?

It's all updated for 2.2!

This looks great, I'm definitely buying this book. Does anyone have a good book recommendation focused on advanced iOS user interface development?

I'm starting to do programmatic layouts in code for my side projects and I think there are huge advantages to building user interfaces in code, but everyone seems to just do storyboards. Instead of waiting for Apple to release nice abstractions like UIStackView, in code you can create your own layout abstractions the way you'd like. There seems to be close to no content based around this unfortunately.

Does this include recently released 2.2 stuff?

Absolutely!

Now I only want the Swift Programming Guide itself in paper form.

Is this available on the iBookStore?

Not yet, but it will be!

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