I was lucky enough to not only get selected to buy a ticket for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) this year, but my employer graciously sponsored my trip to San Francisco. I felt extremely privileged to be present for the announcement of Swift; a new programming language created by Apple for the development of applications for OS X and iOS.

While in San Francisco, I took the opportunity to meet in person, for the first time, with Cliff Colby. Cliff is a publisher at Peachpit Press and I was lucky enough to work with him while co-writing the Mastering Xcode book. While at lunch he broached the subject of writing another book, this time about the newly announced Swift language. At first I was a bit daunted: writing a book about Xcode was one thing, but to write about an entire programming language (never mind a brand new language) was another.

We continued to bat the idea back and forth and eventually came to the conclusion that an extensive language guide was not to be our goal – after all, Apple had released the definitive book, for free, at WWDC – so we settled on the idea of producing a book that comprehensively takes existing Objective-C developers from an awareness of Swift to leveraging their existing UIKit and AppKit experience in the new language. The Swift Translation Guide for Objective-C Developers was born.

From August to November I wrote in what spare time my family and employers could grant me, and produced a book that I’m really proud of. It makes me very happy to say that it is now available to purchase and if you decide to do so, then I hope you enjoy it. For more information, purchase links, and sample code, please go to the official site for the book: swift-translation.guide.