I’ve been plugging along through the iOS Apprentice book from raywenderlich.com over the past few weeks. Let me say one thing: this thing is AMAZING.
RayWenderlich.com iOS Apprentice Book Synopsis
The iOS Apprentice is a series of epic-length tutorials for beginners where you’ll learn how to build 4 complete apps from scratch.
Each new app will be a little more advanced than the one before, and together they cover everything you need to know to make your own apps. By the end of the series you’ll be experienced enough to turn your ideas into real apps that you can sell on the App Store.
These tutorials have easy to follow step-by-step instructions, and consist of more than 900 pages and 500 illustrations! You also get full source code, image files, and other resources you can re-use for your own projects.
I started out by just signing up for the site’s newsletter. When you sign up for the newsletter, you get emailed the entire first full-length tutorial in the iOS Apprentice book for FREE. At first, I ignored the tutorial as I was focused on just grabbing what I needed from Googling, but I quickly became frustrated with the gaps in my knowledge.
I stumbled upon the RayWenderlich.com site tutorials quite often in my googling and saw that the site had some new Swift and iOS books coming out. I didn’t realize that the tutorial that I got for free with the newsletter sign up was actually the first of four chapters in the iOS Apprentice, and I was interested in buying the iOS Apprentice so I dug up the tutorial in my Gmail and decided to commit to going through it.
As soon as I made it through the first few pages, I knew this was going to be an amazing resource. I zoomed through the free tutorial and was hooked–I decided to bite and I actually bought the complete Mega Swift Bundle from RayWenderlich.com…that’s how sure I was that this was how I wanted to learn.
So as of today, I’ve completed the iOS Apprentice book–all 1,018 pages! I’ve learned so, so much, a lot of which is how to do iOS development in Swift the right way–not by hacking together a bunch of stuff I find online. My current unfinished app definitely has some ‘no-no’s’ in it that the book’s author, Matthijs, pointed out along the way that I’m going to have to go through and fix now that I know.
My next adventure: the RayWenderlich.com Core Data by Tutorials Book! To make my unfinished app work better, I need to get better at Core Data, so this will definitely help!
P.S.: I’m also making my way through the Swift Apprentice book bit by bit as I go along. Another great resource.
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Justin, how would you compare the two books “iOS apprentice” and “Swift Apprentice”? do you recommend a particular order in which to follow the books?
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Hey Nihal!
Well the Swift Apprentice teaches everything there is to know about the Swift programming language itself while the iOS Apprentice teaches how to make iOS apps (4 of them). In the iOS Apprentice book you’ll learn what you need to know to make the apps in Swift, but you might not fully learn the why’: of the language. Apple’s own Swift eBook in iBook Store is also very good for learning the Swift language itself. 🙂
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Hi Justin.
So…worth it spend $54.99?
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I definitely don’t regret my purchase so yup!
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How long did you take, to complete it? (On average)
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I’m wondering the same question as @SHRU.
Yes I’m thinking of buying this aswell to read up on some swift skills before a new project att work. But time is of the essence and I will need to finish it pretty soon.
How long did it take to finish?
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It was a long fine ago, but based on what I said in my post, it makes it aound like it took me 3-4 weeks. It’s over 1,000 pages of step by step tutorials, so it alll just defends on how much you do per day! Give it a go. Good luck!
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Justin, Hi, you recommend the Swift Apprentice to learn the whys? Or to go through iOS Apprentice 1st, then the Swift Apprentice?
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Hi Mo! Sorry for the late reply.
If you are already comfortable with Swift itself, then I say jump right into the iOS Apprentice, as it will not teach you Swift, but will teach you how to create 4 iOS apps using Swift.
If you need to learn Swift still, the Swift Apprentice is a good option. Also Apple’s free Apple Books Swift book is really good as well. You can get it here: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/the-swift-programming-language-swift-4-2/id881256329?mt=11
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