This book is aimed at developers who are interested in learning the Swift programming language and how to write iOS applications using Swift. No prior programming experience for iOS is assumed, although a basic level of programming experience in a dynamically or statically typed programming language is expected. It is assumed that you are familiar with navigating and using Mac OS X and in the cases where Terminal commands are required, you have experience of simple shell commands or can pick them up quickly from the examples given.

Developers who are familiar with Objective-C will know many of the frameworks and libraries mentioned; however, an existing knowledge of Objective-C and its frameworks is neither necessary nor assumed.

The sources are provided in a GitHub repository at https://github.com/alblue/com.packtpub.swift.essentials/ and can be used to switch between the content of chapters using the tags in the repository. A knowledge of Git is helpful if you want to navigate between different versions; alternatively, the web-based interface at GitHub can be used instead. It is highly recommended that you become familiar with Git, as it is the standard version control system for Xcode and the de facto standard for open source projects. You are invited to read the Git topics at the author's blog, http://alblue.bandlem.com/Tag/git/, if you are unfamiliar and interested in learning more.