Here’s the capsule review: iOS 10 Programming for Beginners, written by fellow Tampa developer Craig Clayton, is a great book. If you’re new to programming, it’s for you, because it doesn’t assume any prior programming experience. If you have programming experience but are new to iOS programming or the Swift programming language, you’ll also find it useful. Hey, I’ve been programming for years, I have an app in the App Store, and I run Tampa iOS Meetup, and I learned a couple of things from it!
Craig knows what he’s talking — and writing — about. He organized and ran the Suncoast iOS Meetup here in Tampa as well as intensive iOS coding academies, and he makes a living writing mobile apps. If you’re a Patriots fan with an iPhone, chances are you’ve used his app (pictured on the right).
iOS 10 Programming for Beginners starts with the basics — getting familiar with Xcode, the tool used for writing iOS apps — and then spends a couple of chapters getting you up to speed with Swift through the use of programming exercises in Xcode’s playgrounds.
Once the book has provided you with enough Swift knowledge to be dangerous, it spends a couple of chapters introducing iOS’ UI elements and basic application architecture. The final two-thirds of the book is devoted to building a single application: Let’s Eat, a restaurant review app that becomes more sophisticated and gains more features with each chapter. Each chapter begins with an explanation of the topics that will be covered, and features both clear explanations of those topics, along with step-by-step instructions for turning those topics into working code. Craig does an excellent job of explaining what he did with his code and why he did it.
As you work on Let’s Eat, you’ll have built a professional-looking app that uses a number of iOS features, including GPS and maps, the camera, iPad multitasking, iMessage, and even 3D touch. When you’re done, you should be able to take the knowledge from working on the app and apply it to your own projects.
If learning iOS programming was one of your new year’s resolutions, do yourself a big favor and get your hands on iOS 10 Programming for Beginners. There’s a lot of knowledge packed into this book!
You can get the book from:
- Directly from Packt, the publisher ($39.99 for the ebook, $49.99 for the ebook and paper edition)
- Amazon ($35.99 for the Kindle edition, $49.99 for the paper edition)