Checking in on the Swift Developer’s Cookbook:

• The book has finished production. It’s available for pre-order at Amazon. InformIT has a pre-order page up as well.
• It’s available right now to read at Safari Books Online through their Rough Cuts program. You can get a free multi-day trial.
• The book will participate in Pearson/Addison Wesley’s new Content Update Program, which I describe below in this post.
• My editor says the actual pub date is December 17. It will make an awesome holiday present for yourself or your favorite geek.

What’s in it?

The cookbook kicks off with a discussion of how to migrate code when the language changes. (Some persons I showed this to inside Fruit-world were dismayed: “Why are you starting off with migration?” Everyone outside Fruit-world I showed this to nodded their heads with wry understanding.)

Within the book, each chapter focuses on day-to-day-development concepts and best practices. This is the book you buy after working through Apple’s language tour, to learn how to use all those language features to get real work done. You can view a full table of contents at InformIT in the Sample Content tab.

I’m hoping this book will work for both Apple-centric Swift developers as well as new developers jumping in from Linux after the big Open Source event.

The Content Update program

My Pearson team and I spent a lot of time discussing how to develop content for a language that’s been changing since it launched. While I think Swift 2 is going to be a lot more stable than Swift 1, I wanted to be sure we accounted for Apple’s constant, accelerated tech changes.

The Swift cookbook participates in Pearson’s new Content Update program, which works like this:

• As Apple makes significant updates to the Swift 2 language, sections of my book may be updated or new sections added.
• Book updates are delivered via a free Web Edition, which can be accessed with any Internet connection.
• Customers register their books (print versions, ebook versions, whatever) with AW/Pearson, and if and when content changes, they receive email updates.

In other words, the CU program acts a guard against the book going out of date two days after you purchase it. What’s more, I architected the book to be as long-lived as possible, focusing on core language concepts.

So, to wrap up, thank you everyone who has pre-ordered and thank you everyone who’s considering a purchase soon. If you have any specific questions about the program or the book, drop me an email.