Programming in Swift: Fundamentals

Learn about Apple’s open source programming language, Swift, through hands-on examples! Take a deep dive into the Swift language, learning about core Swift concepts like loops, collections, types, optionals, functions, classes, and more. By Catie Catterwaul & Chris Belanger.

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Learning path

This is part of the iOS and SwiftUI for Beginners learning path. View path.

Who is this for?

Beginners! If you’ve never created a playground before, or if you aren’t sure what while loops or break statements are, this is a great course to get you started. With easy-to-understand lessons and hands-on practice, soon you’ll be writing your own methods and implementing structures and classes with ease.

You’ll start at the very beginning, creating your first playground and learning about comments, tuples, booleans, and operators. Then, you’ll learn to control the flow of your code. For loops, switch statements, enums, oh my! You’ll build on the basics by implementing functionals and optionals through fun, hands-on challenges.

This course isn’t suited for intermediate or advanced developers. If that’s you, check out our intermediate or advanced video courses for more ways to level-up your developer skills!

Covered concepts

  • Playgrounds
  • Comments
  • Tuples
  • Booleans
  • Operators
  • For loops
  • While loops
  • Switch statements
  • Enumerations
  • Functionals
  • Optionals
  • Collections
  • Arrays
  • Dictionaries
  • Structures
  • Properties
  • Methods
  • Classes/Subclasses
  • Protocols
  • Closures
  • Initializers
  • Memory management

Part 1: Core Concepts

01
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Let’s review what you’ll be learning in this section, and why it’s important.

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Learn how to create your first Swift playground, what all the various bits are in playgrounds, and how comments work.

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Learn how to use a Swift type called Booleans, which represent true or false values.

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Practice using booleans on your own, through a series of hands-on challenges.

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Learn how to use various logical and comparison operators in Swift to create Booleans.

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Practice using logical operators on your own, through a series of hands-on challenges.

Optionals 11:41
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Learn about one of the most important aspects of Swift development - optionals - and how to unwrap, force unwrap, and bind optionals.

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Practice using optionals on your own, through a set of hands-on challenges.

Conclusion 1:50
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Let’s review where you are with your Swift core concepts, and discuss what’s next.

Part 2: Beginning Collections

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Let’s review what you’ll be learning in this section, and why it’s important.

Tuples 6:24
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Learn to group related data together into a single unit, through the power of a Swift type called Tuples.

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Practice using tuples on your own, through a series of hands-on challenges.

Arrays 5:13
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Learn how to use arrays in Swift to store an ordered list of values.

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See how to manipulate arrays with their built-in methods.

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Practice using arrays on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

Conclusion 0:59
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Let’s review where you are with your Swift core concepts, and discuss what’s next.

Part 3: Control Flow

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Let’s review what you’ll be learning in this section, and why it’s important.

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Learn how to make Swift repeat your code multiple times with while loops, repeat while loops, and break statements.

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Practice using while loops on your own, through a hands-on challenges.

For Loops 10:04
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Learn how to use for loops in Swift, along with ranges, continue, and labeled statements.

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Practice using for loops on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

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Learn how to use your existing knowledge of for loops to iterate over collections.

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Practice iterating over collections using loops on your own, through a hands-on challenges.

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Learn how to nest one loop inside another, and even terminate a loop early if and when you need to.

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Practice working with nested loops and the break and continue statements on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

Conclusion 1:18
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Let’s review where you are with your Swift core concepts, and discuss what’s next.

Part 4: More Collections

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Let’s review what you’ll be learning in this section, and why it’s important.

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Learn how to create and populate Dictionaries, a useful collection in Swift.

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See how to access the contents of dictionaries and manipulate dictionaries.

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Practice using dictionaries on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

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Learn how to create sets, how to populate them with data and retrieve that data, and how to compare sets to each other with their built-in methods.

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Practice using sets on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

Conclusion 1:16
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Let’s review what you learned in this section, and discuss what’s next.

Part 5: Functions & Named Types

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Let’s review what you’ll be learning in this section, and why it’s important.

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Learn how to write your own functions in Swift, and see for yourself how Swift makes them easy to use.

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See how the “return” keyword is used in Swift, and when it’s required and when it’s optional.

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Practice writing functions on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

Structures 10:22
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Learn how structures work, and all about their properties and methods.

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Practice writing structures on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

Classes 9:32
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Learn about the basics of Swift classes, and study how they are similar to and different from structures.

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Practice writing classes on your own, through a hands-on challenge.

Conclusion 1:46
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Let’s review what you learned in this section, and discuss what’s next for you in this learning path.

Up next

iOS & Swift
Programming in Swift: Functions & Types
Gain a deeper understanding of functions, practice using closures, and build your skills with named types.

Instructors

Catie Catterwaul
Chris Belanger

Contributors

Catie Catterwaul

Instructor

Chris Belanger

Instructor

Adriana Kutenko

Illustrator

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