I've been building things for the web since 1997. Started out as a web dev doing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (and tables for layout). Then learned PHP in 2002 and created the SimplePie RSS project in 2004. Then created a project called Tarzan (also in PHP) which was forked by AWS to become the AWS SDK for PHP v1.x. Then moved into DevOps and learned Python, Ansible, and cloud architecture. Then learned Docker, Go, and Terraform, and I use those pretty much every day. Now I'm a Principal Cloud Architect who works across our entire engineering ecosystem.

I've wanted to build native apps for Apple platforms for many years, but Objective-C looked so foreign that I could never wrap my brain around its syntax. Swift promised modern syntax, and I've been wanting to learn Swift for a long time, but the first several versions of Swift were incompatible with each other, and every time I came back to it, the language had changed and my code wouldn't compile. I read the first few chapters of the Swift Book when it first came out, so I knew some stuff about Swift, but not enough to do anything.

Now that Swift has a stable ABI, and the language is in less flux, I'm trying again. I'm going chapter by chapter, doing the exercises, and also poking at the syntax to see if I understand it as well as I think I do. Taking lots of notes, asking questions that haven't been answered (yet) in the tutorial (so that I can come back with answers later), and figuring out how Swift can be bent and twisted. So far, I'm on Day 10, and I feel like the concepts are coming together for me pretty well in core Swift.

I have the advantage of already understanding sets, tuples, structs, classes, and closures -- it's just been a matter of learning how Swift does it. I want the code I write to look like the person who wrote it knows Swift, and isn't just a JavaScript/Python/Bash/Go developer pretending to be a Swift developer.

Anyway, just wanted to say hello and THANK YOU to Paul (and anyone else who was involved) for putting this together. This has been a fantastic resource so far, and I really appreciate the work you put into making it so accessible to newcomers! :)