My general rule of thumb with anything written by Oliver Drobnik of Cocoanetics fame is this: Drop whatever you’re doing and go read it. So when Oliver offered me a chance to look through his latest, a book entitled “Barcodes with iOS”, I jumped at the opportunity. (Before I go any further, I should mention that my latest book includes about 7 or 8 pages of barcode development coverage. In some vast distant galaxy where lawyers rule, that might matter. Full disclosure.)

Barcodes with iOS includes nearly 250 pages of expansive coverage of everything you might ever want to know about barcodes:  their history, APIs, AV Foundation integration, who they date, what they wear to parties, and so forth. I’m being a little facetious, but there is a lot of information here for a topic that many developers may simply add to an app one afternoon and then never think about again in their lives.

Fortunately, this is a Drobnik book, which means many gems scattered among the barcode fluff (Fun fact: did you know that the first barcodes date back to World War II and were developed to help scale increase demands from a newly invigorated economy? Neither did I!) The very best bits deep dive into Passbook and beacons and other technology specifics.

When Drobnik starts talking deep-tech, that’s when things get good. In a way, I really wish the book had focused more on specific solutions rather than trying to cover every single fact related to barcodes, because the material that has to do with step-by-step development shines.

You’ll probably want to scan through the book’s table of contents before purchase, to find which bits you’ll want to focus on. Barcodes with iOS is currently selling for about $37 over at Amazon.