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1. This book is amazing. The Kindle Mac OS app is not.
   I borrowed this book from the library and couldn’t renew it because someone put a hold on it. I’ve read through about half and love the content. The only typo I’ve discovered so far in the code is when you create a repo variable to hold a github URL for the swift package manager—the url needs to be wrapped in quotation marks. I noticed the mistake as a I was typing, so I didn’t waste any time.I love the good coding principles and the content on unit testing (something most books avoid).I do not like the Kindle app for Mac OS. The page navigation is either laggy or skippy—I haven’t decided yet, but it doesn’t seem to do what I want it to do. I wish I had spent the $15 more to get it for iBooks.

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2. Intermediate knowledge suggested. A challenge if you are a beginner!
   Swift and IOS programming – Intermediate knowledge level suggested. To truly appreciate this book you need to have some foundation in Swift and IOS programming. The 2nd edition was one of the first books I purchased as a beginner and I purchased this recently. New example projects in this version makes it a good companion book to the previous edition. I learned some basics with other tutorials first and then moved on to this series. It’s a must have on the bookshelf.

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3. 50 pages in and scratching my head over syntax
   I’m still mixed on the book. Granted I’ve learned logo, basic, qbasic, pascal, visual basic, c/c++, perl, php, javascript, and dabbled in react over the past 20 odd years and haven’t programmed intensively in the past 6 years, the syntax for Swift is still pretty confusing. Granted I’ve been a novice programmer since I was 8 and I can understand almost all but the most complex regular expressions in my sleep when I was programming perl professionally, but understanding the syntax for optionals, enums and some aspects of type casting is frustrating when reading the examples.Examples are short and variables are not very well named…so it’s hard to tell if the variable name is syntax and a language-related keyword, or a simple variable name. Seriously….var values = [“name”:”fred’] …if let unwrapped let unwrappedValue = values[“age”] { …. } ….personsAge = values[“age”] ?? “unspecified”Yes, I can understand it….but is the second values a syntax keyword? I assume so…..? Age? Why would I mix an integer an string in this particular example?Granted Learning Perl would have a plethora of fruit and ensemble of names, but examples were designed to be more precise and understandable and would reflect a specific ideal use for a data structure or flow, rather than using generic variable names or examples that don’t highlight the best use of that particular nuance of the language. Examples would be taken and then expanded upon, improving understanding. So a fundamental description of a variable such as lightbulb, would then be adjusted to describe properties such as if the light was on or off, then what color light, or how many, if there were led vs filament, strobe versus constant, etc. Almost all of the examples that I’ve read so far are isolated and require understanding the construct in which they operate….for each and every example of code….it is very very tiresome and does little to showcase the language.Part of the confusion would be better identified with more examples and better explanation of the datasets. Provide a very clear and precise examples and description of the pros/cons in each. Lump them all in a single chapter with multiple exams….don’t skim on that stuff since that is so fundamental to learning the data structures of a program.func createAdder(numberToAdd: Int) -> (Int) -> Int { func adder (number: Int) -> Int { ….Sure, this does explain what it does mechanically, but try to think of an example why you would use a functions as a variable and demonstrate it’s usefulness. It’s like learning a foreign language by just learning each word individually without learning how to compose a sentence.Finally, it’s disconcerting and perplexing to read a method/syntax to decrease the number of lines of code from 5 to 2 lines by a very confusing syntax, rather than opt for something clear, precise and universal that can be easily debugged.I shutter to think of more advanced data structures or a new generation of programmers that are opting to save 2-3 lines of code by some outlandish nuance or feature of the language. It does attempt to provide potential code snippets that one may encounter when reading other people’s code, but I feel that it doesn’t advocate enough for clear and well designed code.In summary, I was really looking forward to coding with Swift. Learning a new language is always exciting. Now, Im 60 pages in and I’m finding that this book is chore to read and a frustration. I honestly am not even looking forward to begin coding with it. Since picking up my first O’Reilly book more than 20 years ago, I have never been as disappointed.

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4. Not Current / Lacking Updates
   The book seems to flow well an it similar to other O’Reilly books I’ve used in the past. However, when you try and apply it to the current version of Xcode and Swift it falls short. There’s been so many syntax changes and updates the 3rd edition is no longer useful. All the examples fail hard with coding errors due to the changes in the later versions.

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5. Good
   Good

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6. Excellent Survey of Swift
   Maybe not the best title, this is more of a survey of swift. The first section is basically a watered down version of Swift documentation with similar (if not the same) examples. The good thing about it is you can get a quick overview of the language without the extra detail. But eventually, you have to read Swift documentation.Where this book excels is the example Selfiegram app. The design is decent, the code is excellent, and you get a great tour of various frameworks. The focus is on how to leverage what can be leverage which lifts the burden of feeling like you have to develop everything. I got a lot of benefit walking through the demonstration, getting some code under my fingers. I can also say that the code works in this book which is a great bonus because, sadly enough, that is the exception rather than the rule.Lastly, the writing style is clear and light. The authors do a great job of walking through the code and scattering tidbits of useful knowledge along the way. That said, this is not really a book to learn swift. It is a great introduction once you know a bit but not a lot. When you really want to learn swift, you will need to supplement, but thinking one book can do it all is ridiculous in my mind. I gave it 5 stars because it fills a need and does so in an excellent way.

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7. Poorly written book
   This book does a bad job of explaning concepts. I’ve read dry, dense, complicated textbooks on programming theory in my computer science graduate courses that were written better than this. The author manages to make building a basic app in XCode as difficult as building a multinomial logistic regression model for the beginner. It’s taking me the same amount of effort to understand this book. You have to suffer through poorly written textbooks in grad school, but you don’t have to suffer through it in the real world! Save your money and watch free YouTube tutorials.

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8. The examples DO NOT WORK
   I can’t *stand* a book like this where I have to figure out on my own why the EXAMPLES DON’T WORK!!Page 104: swift buildERROR: “targets must precede dependencies”OK, I fixed it. I defied the book and put targets before dependenciesERROR: “type Target has no member ‘target'”OK I give up. I need a book that will actually teach me how to do this.Now I have to go figure out WHY – ON MY OWN.I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!!

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9. Poorly organized, poorly explained examples that don’t even compile.

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