Swift Translation Guide for Objective-C Users: Develop and Design

Chapter 3. Language Basics

Every programming book starts with the basics of the language for a reason: Without a grasp of the fundamental components, a firm understanding of the language is much harder to achieve. You could struggle through the concepts of higher-level constructs like classes and collections, but it becomes a real slog if you don’t understand the building blocks like types, functions, and operators. Still, many experienced programmers skip over the first chapter or two, thinking they’ll pick up the basics as they go along.

Swift and Objective-C are similar but not identical; they have some particularly crucial differences such as the basic types, functions, and variable/constant declarations. That’s why the basics are even more ...