100 Days of SwiftUI

What now?

Congratulations on completing the 100 Days of SwiftUI! I expect you’re feeling a number of different things right now.

I’d like to think that you’re proud of all the work you put in. Doing 100 days of coding might have sounded easy in the first week or so, but by week eight you probably had to work harder and harder to motivate yourself.

I expect you feel tired, both physically but also mentally. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted a week or two away from Swift. Trust me: you’ve earned it!

I hope you feel inspired for the future. This course was designed to expose you to a range of SwiftUI features in a hands-on way, so you’ve learned about all the major features of SwiftUI alongside Core Image, MapKit, and more. You won’t build an app that uses all those things, but everyone will take different things from the course and use those experiences to build their own dream app.

However, one thing you’re almost certainly feeling is a weird sense of emptiness. For the last 100 days you’ve been taking an hour or more out of your day to work on Swift – you’ve spent so long listening to my voice ramble on about @State properties and similar, but now that’s all finished, so there’s a “100 Days of SwiftUI”-shaped hole in your life.

The natural question your brain asks is “what now?”

Well, I have a few suggestions.

Start building your portfolio

In the 100 Days of SwiftUI you’ve seen a wide range of apps, tools, and techniques – I’ve done my very best to show you what’s out there, and give you maximum exposure to different coding styles, different Apple frameworks, and more.

But when you want to get a job – when you want to turn your skills into a career – the most important thing you can do is build a portfolio of your work, that shows you’re able to build professional-quality apps that would be at home at any company.

Well, I have the perfect course for you: it’s called The Ultimate Portfolio App, and it walks you through building one complete SwiftUI app that’s packed with the kinds of things employers look for, including:

Thoughtful code architecture
Unit tests and UI tests
Localization and accessibility
Code linting and documentation

Plus it uses a wide range of Apple’s powerhouse frameworks, including Core Data and iCloud, in-app purchases, notifications, Spotlight, Shortcuts, haptics, widgets, and more, and your finished app works on iOS, macOS, and beyond.

Best of all, the Ultimate Portfolio App course comes as part of Hacking with Swift+, my subscription tutorial service, which means every installment comes as both a video and article, and you also get over 400 other tutorials on a range of more advanced topics – it’s the fastest way to level up your Swift skills.

Find out more about Hacking with Swift+

Support free learning

First, if this course was useful to you I’d like you to consider either subscribing to my tutorials or buying one of my books. I’ve provided everything here – all the daily introductions, all the videos, all the tests, and more – free of charge, because I want to help folks reach their goals regardless of their income.

The best place for that is at Hacking with Swift+, which offers the widest range of tutorials, plus monthly live streams, and more.

Alternatively, you could buy a book from me:

Pro SwiftUI takes your SwiftUI skills to the next level with deeper learning and advanced effects.
Pro Swift teaches you advanced Swift skills.
Swift Design Patterns teaches you advanced iOS app architecture.
Testing Swift teaches you how to write tests to make your code more stable.
Swift Coding Challenges gives you a range of coding problems to help you pass job interviews.

Ship an app

It’s one thing to code an app but quite another to ship an app. You need to spend far more time finding and fixing bugs, testing on various devices, and of course taking screenshots, writing descriptions, and more.

So, for all the apps you’ve built so far – including all the challenges that you wrote yourself – you’ve done the first 90% of the work, but if you want real experience it’s time to do the second 90% of the work and actually ship the app.

And finally…

Throughout these 100 days I’ve tried to inspire you, make you think, and perhaps even make you laugh with a range of quotes from people in our industry and beyond.

Today I’d like to sign off with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

I’ve always said that programming is an art, and that you shouldn’t spend all your time sharpening your pencil when you should be drawing. Well, now it’s time for the sharpening to stop and the drawing to begin – I hope you enjoy it, I hope you reach your goals, and I hope you find great success with SwiftUI!

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