Objective-C for Swift Developers

Free Course

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Estimated time
Approx. 5 Weeks
Skill level
Intermediate
Prerequisites
See prerequisites in detail

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About this course

This course is designed to teach students how to understand and identify the differences between the Objective-C and Swift programming languages, and especially, how to rewrite from the former to the latter. Understanding communications between the two languages—called "interoperability"—is becoming more and more important for developers, particularly as we prepare for the arrival of Swift 3.0. In the course, students will write classes and add functionality to classes by writing and calling methods. After learning some basic Objective-C syntax, students will examine and break down an app written in Objective-C and rewrite it in Swift. The course will conclude with a review of and practice with the most common challenges for interoperability between Objective-C and Swift.

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What you will learn

Objective-C and Swift, Compare and Contrast
- Learn the distinguishing language features of Objective-C.
- Compare and contrast Objective-C and Swift language features.
- Practice answering interview questions about language features.
Writing Classes
- Familiarize yourself with Objective-C syntax.
- Write some classes and properties from scratch.
- Build a simple Objective-C program with classes.
Adding Functionality to a Class: Methods and Messages
- Master how to write and call methods in Objective-C.
- Learn basic control flow syntax.
- Build a functioning rock, paper, scissors game.
Migrate an App from Objective-C to Swift: Part I
- Learn how to write custom classes.
- Incorporate third party frameworks and extensions.
- Begin porting an existing Objective-C project into Swift.
Migrate an App from Objective-C to Swift: Part II
- Persist data with NSCoder and NSKeyedArchiver.
- Implement navigation with a collection view.
- Finish porting an existing Objective-C project into Swift.
Common Interoperability Challenges
- Facilitate communication between the languages of iOS.
- Add functionality to a mixed language project.
- Complete a set of coding challenges to sharpen interop skills.

Prerequisites and requirements

Experience writing iOS apps in Swift.

See the Technology Requirements for using Udacity.

Why take this course?

This course will teach you the distinguishing language features of Objective-C, including basic syntax. With this knowledge you will be able to confidently answer some of the most commonly asked interview questions related to Objective-C. You will migrate an app from Objective-C to Swift and in so doing become familiar with the experience of deciphering an unfamiliar Objective-C codebase, an experience you are likely to encounter in your first job as an iOS developer. You will also get an opportunity to practice with interoperability between Objective-C and Swift, practice negotiating the differences between the languages of iOS.

When you look out at the iOS landscape you likely see that the number of engineers developing in Swift is growing rapidly, yet many apps and third party APIs are still written in Objective-C. This course is designed to help prepare you for that landscape.

Learn with the best.

Gabrielle Miller-Messner
Instructor