Hello,

I am a relatively exprienced programmer (expereince with C, C++, Java, Python), but I am completely new to Swift and Swift UI, and have zero experice developing for macOS, or any other Apple platforms. I've come across a couple opportunites recently where it would be useful for me to be able write apps for macOS, hence why I'm interested in learning!

I did a little bit of googleing on the best resource/course/book to learn Swift, and almost everything referred me to here, and specifically the 100 Days of Swift course. Reading the description of the 100 Days of Swift course, I read that for newcomers, he recommended to just do the 100 Days of SwiftUI course.

So, I was looking through the course, and the one thing I noticed is that it seems to be focus on SwiftUI for IOS development. In fact the reason why I decided to ask this question is becasue in the 'How to folow along' video in Day 1 of the course, he specifically says that 'we will not be making macOS apps in this course. I wanted to ask you all if the course would still be good for learning Swift for macOS development, as I don't have an interest in developing for IOS right now, or if you guys have a better reccomendation for a resource to follow for learning macOS development.

Like I said, I'm completely new to Swift and writing programs for Apple platforms. I'd imagine the skills and fundementals are pretty transferrable between learning SwiftUI for IOS and then learning for macOS (or maybe not). I just wanted to ask since I'm not interesting in developing for IOS, would there be a course that would be a better use of my time, and also given that I'm not new to programming.

Thanks so much!

Hi dkressjr

While 100 Days course is mainly iOS based, a lot of the code will adapted and apply to macOS some of the modiflier will be different. So would be advantage to learn this first!, however Paul does a Hacking with macOS book and has done a number of live streams that cover macOS apps. I am sure that with these you be able to get started very quickly with you background.

@Nigel gives good advice.

You're correct that many of the concepts (interface containers, buttons, sliders, data sharing, databases, etc, etc) are exactly the same between iOS and MacOS. This is by design!

Once you've mastered interface concepts from the Hacking With SwiftUI course, you can explore other tutorials.

I'd recommend you check out Karin Prater's MacOS focused tutorials at www.swiftyplace.com

Another Mac resource is a $50 book by Sarah Reichelt, recently updated for MacOS 14 (Sonoma), Xcode 15 and Xcode 16 beta 3. Chapter 1 is available for free: troz.net/books/macos_tutorials/

I like her tutorial on the Observation framework: troz.net/post/2023/swiftui-data-flow-2023/

and Mac menus: troz.net/post/2021/swiftui_mac_menus/

Unfortunately, Mac-specific tutorials are scarce because the vast majority of Swift programmers are focussed on iOS.