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iOS

Posted by Ivan Cadena
Ivan Cadena
2,949 Points

Help Learing Swift

I have been using treehouse for a month now and i am learning swift. I am really trying to remember what I am learning, i am doing all the code challenges, but i want to really remember the material so i can start doing things by myself. Can anyone recommend exercises or anything else to help retain the information? thanks!

1 Answer

Damien Watson
Damien Watson
27,419 Points
Damien Watson
Damien Watson
27,419 Points

Hi Ivan,

Everyone is different, but I find in my experience that the only way I can learn and retain a new language is to build a few apps with it. I haven't yet moved over to Swift but when I was teaching myself Objective C, I built a number of apps which really helped me with learning through repetition.

The other way, and maybe more helpful is to document what you have learnt. I find that until I have done something around 4 times I don't remember it, so find it helpful to have the source code explained and written down when I learn it. Having your own explanation to come back to is a massive help, and you know it is going to work because you have done it before.

Your own code repository is a great help as well when speed building. Again and again people say that no one ever remembers everything when it comes to coding, this is why there are usually good docs around. But if you have code that works and you have used before, this is a massive help.

Cheers

Ivan Cadena
Ivan Cadena
2,949 Points

Thanks Damien! I have been taking notes as I go and referening back to them as I do code challenges and I find it very helpful. I haveb been wanting to write my own apps like you, but I dont know where to start :(

Damien Watson
Damien Watson
27,419 Points

Cool, yeh as wierd as it may sound I use Word to store them, its a pain because I then have to strip the Word formatting from the code before pasting in, but its all there formatted and easy to find. I have one for each language / technology I come across (36 docs at the moment) and my ObjC is currently at 28 pages.

Start small. You need to achieve some small success, if you get bogged down in a big app you could spend a lot of time and get discouraged. Seeing I know iOS, I thought I would learn Android (as you do;). The weather app on Treehouse was good as I used it every day. Look for something that you do every day or week and build something to make it easier.

Even if you have an app that does it, you can still build one yourself and then customise it to your own use. Maybe something like a simple todo list, I've been thinking I should build one that takes reminders and figure out how to shoot of alarms when the time arrives but haven't got around to it yet. I know calendar can do this, but I can customise this for a specific audience, like people who forget things and make it easier for them. Sometimes taking something that exists but making it better and easier to use is a winner.

Ivan Cadena
Ivan Cadena
2,949 Points

Thanks for the advice! Im for sure going to start brainstorming ideas for my own little projects. I was going to learn ObjC before learning Swift but I went with Swift because Apple has really made it easy to learn for beginners like me in the Swift language. After I get better I will go back and learn more languages including ObjC as well as learn to program for Android!