Download UIKit Apprentice PDF
Download UIKit Apprentice EPUB
UIKit Apprentice Book Details
Title: UIKit Apprentice
Author: Fahim Farook & Matthijs Hollemans
Language: English
No. of pages: 1151
Format: PDF, EPUB
Introduction UIKit Apprentice Book
Hi, welcome to The UIKit Apprentice: Beginning iOS Development with Swift, Second Edition, the swiftest way — if you’ll pardon the pun — to iOS development mastery!
In this book, you’ll learn how to make your own iPhone and iPad apps using Apple’s Swift programming language (and Xcode 13) and the iOS UIKit framework, by building four interesting iOS apps.
Everybody likes games, right? So, you’ll start by building a simple but fun iPhone game named Bull’s Eye. It will teach you the basics of iPhone programming, and the other apps will build on what you learn there.
Taken together, the four apps that you’ll build cover everything you need to know to make your own apps. By the end of the book, you’ll be experienced enough to turn your ideas into real apps that you can put on the App Store!
Even if you’ve never programmed before, or if you’re new to iOS, you should be able to follow along with the step-by-step instructions and understand how these apps are made. Each chapter has a ton of illustrations to prevent you from getting lost. Not everything might make sense right away, but hang in there and all will become clear in time.
Writing your own iOS apps is a lot of fun, but it’s also hard work. If you have the imagination and perseverance, there is no limit to what you can make your apps do. It is my sincere belief that this book can turn you from a complete newbie into an accomplished iOS developer, but you do have to put in the time and effort. By writing this book, I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you…
About this book
The UIKit Apprentice will help you focus on developing applications for iOS using Apple’s UIKit framework. There are other ways to develop iOS user interfaces (UI) too — such as using SwiftUI. If you are interested in that approach, you can take a look at our other book, SwiftUI Apprentice.
This book will help you become an excellent iOS developer, but only if you let it. Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of this book.
Learn through repetition
You’re going to make several apps in this book. Even though the apps will start out quite simple, you may find the instructions hard to follow at first — especially if you’ve never done any computer programming before — because I will introduce a lot of new concepts.
It’s OK if you don’t understand everything right away, as long as you get the general idea. As you proceed through the book, you’ll go over many of these concepts again and again until they solidify in your mind.
Follow the instructions yourself
It is important that you not just read the instructions but also actually follow them. Open Xcode, type in the source code fragments, and run the app in the simulator as instructed. This helps you to see how the app gets built step by step.
Even better, play around with the code and with the Xcode settings. Feel free to modify any part of the app and see what the results are — make a small change to the code and see how it affects the entire app. Experiment and learn! Don’t worry about breaking stuff — that’s half the fun. You can always find your way back to the beginning. But better still, you might even learn something from simply breaking the code and learning how to fix it.
If you try everything but are still stuck, the forums for this book are at https:// forums.raywenderlich.com/c/books/uikit-apprentice/, so drop by. I’m around most of the time and will be happy to answer any questions related to the book and any issues you might have run into.
Don’t panic — bugs happen!
You will run into problems, guaranteed. Your programs will have strange bugs that will leave you stumped. Trust me, I’ve been programming for 30 years and that still happens to me, too. We’re only humans and our brains have a limited capacity to deal with complex programming problems. In this book, I will give you tools for your mental toolbox that will allow you to find your way out of any hole you have dug for yourself.
Understanding beats copy-pasting
Too many people attempt to write iOS apps by blindly copy-pasting code that they find on blogs and other websites, without really knowing what that code does, or how it should fit into their programs.
There is nothing wrong with looking on the web for solutions — I do it all the time — but I want to give you the tools and knowledge to understand what you’re doing and why. That way, you’ll learn quicker and write better programs.
This is hands-on practical advice, not a bunch of dry theory — although we can’t avoid some theory. You are going to build real apps right from the start, and I’ll explain how everything works along the way, with lots of images that illustrate what is going on.
I will do my best to make it clear how everything fits together, why we do things a certain way and what the alternatives are.
Do the exercises
I will also ask you to do some thinking of your own — yes, there are exercises! It’s in your best interest to actually do these exercises. There is a big difference between knowing the path and walking the path… And the only way to learn programming is to do it.
I encourage you to not just do the exercises but also to play with the code you’ll be writing. Experiment, make changes, try to add new features. Software is a complex piece of machinery, and to find out how it works, you sometimes have to put some spokes in the wheels and take the whole thing apart. That’s how you learn!
Have fun With UIKit Apprentice Book
Last but not least, remember to have fun! Step by step, you will build up your understanding of programming while making fun apps. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned the essentials of Swift and the iOS Software Development Kit (SDK). More importantly, you should have a pretty good idea of how everything goes together and how to think like a programmer.
It’s my aim that, by the time you reach the end of the book, you will have learned enough to stand on your own two feet as a developer. I am confident that, eventually, you’ll be able to write any iOS app that you want as long as you get those basics down. You still may have a lot to learn but, when you’re through with The UIKit Apprentice, you can do it without the training wheels.
Who this UIKit Apprentice book is for
This book is great whether you are completely new to programming or if you come from a different programming background and are looking to learn iOS development.
If you’re a complete beginner, don’t worry — this book doesn’t assume you know anything about programming or making apps. Of course, if you do have programming experience, that helps. Swift is a new programming language but, in many ways, it’s similar to other popular languages such as PHP, C#, or JavaScript.
If you’ve tried iOS development before with the old language, Objective-C, then its low-level nature and strange syntax may have put you off. Well, there’s good news: Now that we have a modern language in Swift, iOS development has become a lot easier to pick up.
It is not my aim, with this book, to teach you all the ins and outs of iOS development. The iOS SDK is huge and there is no way we can cover everything. Fortunately, we don’t need to. You just need to master the essential building blocks of Swift and the iOS SDK. Once you understand these fundamentals, you can easily figure out how the other parts of the SDK work and learn the rest on your own terms.
The most important thing I’ll teach you is how to think like a programmer. That will help you approach any programming task, whether it’s a game, a utility, a mobile app that uses web service or anything else you can imagine.
As a programmer, you’ll often have to think your way through difficult computational problems and find creative solutions. By methodically analyzing these problems, you will be able to solve them, no matter how complex. Once you possess this valuable skill, you can program anything!
