Swift for the Really Impatient is the perfect jumpstart to the Swift language for every experienced Objective-C developer. Leading iOS and OS X developers Matt Henderson and Dave Wood help you take full advantage of Swift’s powerful innovations, without wasting time on basics you already know. Through expert code examples and crystal-clear explanations, Henderson and Wood reveal how Swift features improve on Objective-C and show how to make the most of them. You’ll quickly master “Swift-er” techniques for using objects, classes, optionals, generics, functions, closures, and more. Each chapter includes hands-on exercises designed to reinforce and deepen your skills. You’ll learn how to re-implement common Objective-C programming solutions in Swift, improving code clarity, power, and performance on both desktop and mobile devices. And, because you probably won’t (or can’t) abandon Objective-C anytime soon, you’ll discover how to use both languages together, smoothly integrate Swift into existing projects and workflows, and gradually move your current code base into the future. Coverage includes Using Swift’s new patterns and concise, expressive syntax to produce safer, more reliable code Leveraging the surprising power of Swift’s data structures Utilizing Swift’s type system to help prevent errors common in other languages Using optionals to correctly handle invalid, missing, or unknown values Implementing generics to reduce duplication, improve power, and simplify maintenance Interacting with C and Objective-C APIs Abstracting functionality for reusable code while maintaining type safety Isolating code in clean, flexible, low-overhead closures Combining Swift with Objective-C in the same project Avoiding gotchas when importing Objective-C classes in Swift projects Nesting types to improve code clarity Creating shared objects with singletons Managing threading and concurrency with Swift’s advanced Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) patterns

Table of Contents:
Foreword     xi Preface     xiii Acknowledgments     xv About the Authors      xvi Chapter 1: Introducing Swift     1 1.1 Basic Syntax     2 1.1.1 Variables and Constants     2 1.1.2 String Interpolation     5 1.1.3 Control Flow     6 1.2 Basic Data Types     10 1.2.1 Int     10 1.2.2 Double and Float     12 1.2.3 Bool     13 1.2.4 Strings     14 1.2.5 Arrays     15 1.2.6 Dictionaries     19 Exercises     20 Chapter 2: Diving Deeper into Swift’s Syntax     21 2.1 Optionals     22 2.2 Generics     25 2.3 Type Annotations and Type Inference     28 2.4 Functions and Closures     29 2.4.1 Global Functions     30 2.4.2 Nested Functions     30 2.4.3 Closure Expressions     31 2.5 Tuples     32 2.6 switch Statements and Pattern Matching     34 Exercises     37 Chapter 3: Objects and Classes     39 3.1 Enumerations     41 3.2 Classes     45 3.3 Structures     49 3.4 Subclassing     51 3.5 Overloading     52 3.6 Overriding     54 3.7 Initialization     55 3.8 Properties     57 3.8.1 Computed Properties     59 3.8.2 Property Observers     60 3.8.3 lazy Properties     62 3.9 Subscripting     63 3.10 Protocols     65 3.11 Extensions     67 3.12 Access Control     68 Exercises     73 Chapter 4: Optionals     75 4.1 Optionals and nil     76 4.2 Validity Checking, Optional Binding, and Forced Unwrapping     78 4.3 Optional Chaining     81 4.4 Implicitly Unwrapped Optionals     86 Exercises     88 Chapter 5: Generics     91 5.1 Why Generics?      92 5.2 Generic Functions     92 5.2.1 Type Parameters     93 5.2.2 Using More Than One Type Parameter     94 5.3 Generic Types     94 5.3.1 Associated Types     98 5.3.2 The where Clause     100 Exercises     101 Chapter 6: Functions and Closures     103 6.1 Functions     104 6.1.1 Parameters     104 6.1.2 External Parameter Names     105 6.1.3 Default Parameter Values     107 6.1.4 Variadic and inout Parameters     108 6.1.5 Return Types     110 6.2 Closures     112 6.2.1 Inferring Parameters and the Return Value     113 6.2.2 Trailing Closures     113 6.3 Functional Programming Patterns     114 Exercises     117 Chapter 7: Working with Objective-C     119 7.1 Interacting with C and Objective-C APIs     120 7.1.1 Optional Properties and Return Values     122 7.1.2 AnyObject Types     123 7.1.3 Subclassing, Extensions, and Protocols     124 7.1.4 Automatically Converted Types     126 7.1.5 Selectors and Enums     128 7.1.6 Working with C Code     129 7.2 Working with Swift and Objective-C in a Single Project     130 Exercises     133 Chapter 8: Common Patterns     135 8.1 Nested Types     136 8.2 Singletons     137 8.3 Using Grand Central Dispatch     139 8.3.1 dispatch_once     139 8.3.2 dispatch_async     139 8.3.3 dispatch_after     140 8.3.4 dispatch_apply     140 8.4 Sequences and Generators     141 8.5 Operators     145 8.5.1 Operator Overloading     146 8.5.2 Custom Operators     147 Exercises     148 Index     149