Swift Apprentice: Fundamentals

This is a book for complete beginners to Apple’s modern programming language — Swift.

All the code in the book works inside of Xcode’s easy-to-use playgrounds. That means you can focus on core Swift language concepts, such as classes, protocols, and generics without getting bogged down by extraneous details.

This is a companion book to the SwiftUI Apprentice; the SwiftUI Apprentice focuses on building apps, while Swift Apprentice focuses on the Swift language itself.

macOS Apprentice

macOS Apprentice is a series of multi-chapter tutorials where you’ll learn about developing native macOS apps in Swift, using both SwiftUI — Apple’s newest user interface technology — and AppKit — the venerable UI framework. Along the way, you’ll learn several ways to execute Swift code and you’ll build two fully featured apps from scratch.

If you’re new to macOS and Swift, or to programming in general, learning how to write an app can seem incredibly overwhelming.

That’s why you need a guide that:

Shows you how to write an app step-by-step. Uses tons of illustrations and screenshots to make everything clear. Guides you in a fun and easy-going manner.

You’ll start at the very beginning. The first section assumes you have little to no knowledge of programming in Swift. It walks you through installing Xcode and then teaches you the basics of the Swift programming language. Along the way, you’ll explore several different ways to run Swift code, taking advantage of the fact that you’re developing natively on macOS.

macOS Apprentice doesn’t cover every single feature of macOS; it focuses on the absolutely essential ones. Instead of just covering a list of features, macOS Apprentice does something much more important: It explains how all the building blocks fit together and what is involved in building real apps. You’re not going to create quick example programs that demonstrate how to accomplish a single feature. Instead, you’ll develop complete, fully-formed apps, while exploring many of the complexities and joys of programming macOS.

How is this book different than macOS by Tutorials?

Our other book on building apps for macOS, macOS by Tutorials, is designed for developers who have a solid background in iOS development and are looking to make the leap to developing native macOS apps.

This book, macOS Apprentice, is designed to teach new developers how to build macOS apps while assuming they have little to no experience with Swift or any other part of the Apple development ecosystem.

watchOS With SwiftUI by Tutorials

Build amazing apps with SwiftUI for Apple Watch

The Apple Watch is, by far, the most common smart watch in the market. Its sales have even surpased those of its analog competitors. With this book you will learn how to develop native watchOS applications for this popular device. And at the same time, to do so, you will be using one of the newest and most moderns UI frameworks developed by Apple, SwiftUI.

Catalyst by Tutorials

Run iOS apps Natively on macOS With Catalyst!

Catalyst by Tutorials shows you how to take all of those great apps you’ve built on iOS and run them right on macOS. But like everything else with Apple, it’s not always as straightforward as you’d like it to be. This book will show you how to design your apps to work well on macOS, what you can and can’t port between the two platforms, and any other “gotchas” to keep an eye out for when building apps under Catalyst.

This book is for developers who have a good handle on building iOS apps and want to learn how to port those apps to run on macOS as well.

What is Catalyst?

Formerly known as Marzipan to Apple insiders, Catalyst lets you extend your iPad apps to macOS. Under Catalina and Xcode 11, developers can start building their iPad apps with macOS as a target.

And we’re not just talking about grossly super-sized versions of iPad apps on your Mac; Catalyst apps will support native macOS controls and functionality, such as the familiar menu bar, support for mouse and keyboards, window resizing, proper scroll bars, Touch Bar support, and desktop-based drag and drop.

So if you’ve been hesitating to port your iPad apps to macOS because you just don’t want to have to learn to develop for the desktop, then now is your time to start!

Apple Augmented Reality by Tutorials

Learn Augmented Reality for the Apple Platform!

This book is the easiest and fastest way to get hands-on experience using Apple frameworks and technologies like Reality Composer, RealityKit, and ARKit — all the available rendering technologies Apple has to offer, as well as a collection of fun projects for creating various real-world AR experiences.

After reading this book, you’ll have a deep understanding of the technologies and frameworks used to create powerful, immersive AR experiences for the Apple platform.

Take a deep dive into:

AR Quick Look: Discover how to integrate AR Quick Look into your apps to give them some cool AR superpowers. Reality Composer & Reality Files: Find out how to leverage the power of Reality Composer to create interactive AR-based experiences. Reality Converter & PBR Materials: Discover how PBR materials can add a level of realism to your AR objects, and how you can use Reality Converter to convert, view and customize USDZ content. RealityKit: Find out how to set up and use RealityKit to build a face-based augmented reality app. Facial Blend Shapes: Build a fully interactive augmented reality face mask that reacts to your facial expressions using blend shapes. ARKit: Get a complete introduction to ARKit, Apple’s framework for creating fully interactive augmented reality, and learn about the different types of rendering options available with ARKit. Raycasting & Physics: Learn about raycasting, 2D hit-testing and the SpriteKit physics engine as you add more features and functionality to your game. ECS & Collaborative Experiences: Build a collaborative AR experience and learn how to create and manage a multipeer connection.

Android Apprentice

For Complete Beginners to Android!

If you’re completely new to Android or developing in Kotlin, this is the book for you.

Android Apprentice takes you all the way from building your first app, to submitting your app for sale. By the end of this book, you’ll be experienced enough to turn your vague ideas into real apps that you can release on the Google Play Store.

You’ll build 4 complete apps from scratch — each app is a little more complicated than the previous one. Together, these apps will teach you how to work with the most common controls and APIs used by Android developers around the world.

And these aren’t simple apps, either; you’ll build everything from a simple game, to a checklist app, a map-based app, and a podcast manager and player!

We’ve also included some bonus sections on handling the Android fragmentation problem, how to keep your app up-to-date, preparing your app for release, testing your app, and publishing it for the world to enjoy!

If you’re new to Android programming, you need a guide that:

Shows you how to write an app step-by-step With tons of illustrations and screenshots to make everything clear In a fun and easygoing manner!

We’ve written this book in Kotlin: the new, modern, first-class language for Android developers. You’ll be at the leading edge of Android developers everywhere as you learn how to develop in the fluid and expressive Kotlin language.

The Android Apprentice is your best companion for learning Android development. With all project source code included with the book, and support forums right on our site, it’s simply the best way to start your Android development career.

Android Accessibility by Tutorials

Accessibility is an important, often overlooked, part of building a quality app. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can be confusing and it’s often unclear how to apply these guidelines to Android.

In this book, you’ll learn about building accessible apps on Android using WCAG through hands-on, step-by-step tutorials.

Functional Programming in Kotlin by Tutorials

Functional programming is a powerful paradigm for building your applications. This book will teach you the fundamentals of functional programming in a practical, hands-on way, while showing you how you can safely handle errors and state changes in your programs.

Android App Distribution

If you’re planning on releasing a commercial app to the Google Play Store, you need this book. It will walk you through the entire process of uploading the app to the Play Store, distributing it to testers, creating a release strategy and making sure your users will continue to love it in the future.

In short, this book will give you the knowledge you need to distribute an app with the best chance of long-term success.

Android Animations by Tutorials

This is a book about creating meaningful motion through animation in Android for developers who are familiar with the platform but want to create more visually stunning apps. Starting with simple view animations, this book will move through transition animations including shared element animations, list animations, gestures and scrolling. It ends with a taste of using animations in Jetpack Compose.

Android Test-Driven Development by Tutorials

Learn Test-Driven Development on Android!

Writing apps is hard. Writing testable apps is even harder, but it doesn’t have to be. Reading and understanding all the official Google documentation on testing can be time-consuming — and confusing.

In this book, you’ll learn about Android test-driven development the quick and easy way: by following fun and easy-to-read tutorials. Learn to write sustainable, testable apps, as well as to apply testing strategies to legacy projects via Espresso and UI tests, code coverage and refactoring.

This book is for the intermediate Android developers who already know the basics of Android and Kotlin development but want to learn Android test-driven development.

Topics Covered in This Book

Getting Started with Testing: Learn the core concepts involved in testing including what is a test, why should you test, what should you test and what you should not test.

Test-Driven Development (TDD): Discover the Red-Green-Refactor steps and how to apply them.

The Testing Pyramid: Learn about the different types of tests and how to organize them.

Unit Tests: Learn how to start writing unit tests with TDD using JUnit and Mockito.

Integration Tests: Writing tests with different subsystems is a must in today’s complex application world. Learn how to test with different subsystems including the persistence and network layers.

Architecting for Testing: Explore how to architect your app for testing and why it matters.

TDD on Legacy Projects: Take your TDD to the next level by learning how to apply it to existing legacy projects.

Reactive Programming with Kotlin

Learn Reactive Programming in Kotlin with RxJava!

Not only will you learn how to use RxJava to create complex reactive applications on Android, you’ll also see how to solve common application design issues by using RxJava, RxAndroid and RxKotlin. Finally, you’ll discover how to exercise full control over the library and leverage the full power of reactive programming in your apps. Specifically, learn to handle asynchronous event sequences via two key concepts in Rx—Observables and Observers. Hone your UI development with RxJava and companion libraries to make it easy to work with the UI of your apps, providing a reactive approach to handling user events. Dig into both intermediate and advanced topics, such as error handling, schedulers, app architecture, repositories, and integrating RxJava with Android Jetpack.

Flutter Apprentice

Build for both iOS and Android with Flutter!

Flutter is a new and exciting software development toolkit that lets you target multiple platforms at once, so you can build apps for iOS, Android and even web and desktop, all from a single codebase.

Similar to modern web technologies, Flutter uses a declarative approach to UI development. You can take advantage of “hot reload” of new code while developing, and your apps will perform at native speed thanks to Flutter’s custom rendering engine.

It’s been the dream of mobile developers for years to find a cross-platform tool that lets you build for both iOS and Android without having to write and maintain two separate codebases. With Flutter and Flutter Apprentice, you can achieve that dream!

Data Structures & Algorithms in Dart

Perhaps you’ve heard about Big O notation, stacks and queues, or bubble sort and quicksort. You’d like to learn more, but it’s hard to find any good examples and explanations that use your favorite programming language, Dart.

Data Structures & Algorithms in Dart is here to help with in-depth explanations, copious illustrations, and step-by-step examples. The book begins by reviewing fundamental data structures like lists and maps and then goes on to teach you how to build other important structures from scratch, including stacks, linked lists, queues, trees and graphs. From there you’ll use these data structures to understand and write many different traversal, searching and sorting algorithms. All along the way, you’ll learn how to analyze the efficiency of your code and express that efficiency using Big O notation.

Dart Apprentice: Beyond the Basics

Dart is an easy-to-learn yet powerful programming language. As one of the most versatile languages on the market today, you can use it to write anything from command-line apps and backend servers to native applications for Android, iOS, web, Mac, Windows and Linux. Dart was the language of choice for Flutter, and the two have seen an exponential rise in popularity in recent years.

Dart Apprentice: Beyond the Basics is the second of a two-book series that will teach you all the important concepts you need to master this language. Follow along with the clearly and thoroughly explained concepts, and you’ll be building Dart applications in no time.

Dart Apprentice: Fundamentals

Dart is an easy-to-learn yet powerful programming language. As one of the most versatile languages on the market today, you can use it to write anything from command-line apps and backend servers to native applications for Android, iOS, web, Mac, Windows and Linux. Dart was the language of choice for Flutter, and the two have seen an exponential rise in popularity in recent years.

Dart Apprentice: Fundamentals is the first of a two-book series that will teach you all the basic concepts you need to master this language. Even if you’re completely new to programming, follow along with the clearly and thoroughly explained concepts, and you’ll be building Dart applications in no time.

Real-World Flutter by Tutorials

This book will teach you to build professional iOS and Android apps for the real world using Flutter. You’ll gain all the foundations of mobile development you need to make the best decisions in your own codebase, while addressing critical problems such as state management, user authentication, and dynamic theming.

Hack Your Job Search

Learn the entire process to land software developer interviews for jobs you actually want and are qualified to get. Understand how to research the market, prepare standout application materials, get noticed by reputable recruiters and pass automated screens. Build your skills, network and portfolio while raising your profile. Troubleshoot and iterate to launch the tech career of your dreams!

Unity Apprentice

In this book, you’ll learn how to build 3D games using Unity - one of the most popular cross-platform game engines available today. The book will first describe the most commonly used features of the Unity Editor and the Unity Hub. It’ll then go on to describe how you build three separate, but related, games that collectively cover the most important aspects of game development. These include scene creation, detecting and managing collisions, user interface design and building, scripting, navigation, camera control, object pooling and animation. The book also describes some of the best practices you should use to get the best out of Unity, and how to make your games run in the most efficient way, enabling you to focus on the fun part: making a great game that your players will enjoy!