After reading this book, you will know enough to understand and utilize Apple’s online documentation for your own unique needs. And you will know enough to write your own stylish code.
This edition was written for Xcode 6.3 and Swift 1.2. At WWDC 2015, Apple announced Xcode 7 and Swift 2, both of which introduce significant updates that (along with some changes to Cocoa for OS X 10.11) affect some of the exercises in this book. We have prepared a companion guide listing the changes needed to use Xcode 7 to work through the exercises in the book; it is available at https://github.com/bignerdranch/cocoa-programming-for-osx-5e/blob/master/Swift2.md.
Adam Preble learned Cocoa programming from the first edition of this book and after ten years in the software industry, joined Big Nerd Ranch to write Mac and iOS software as a consultant. He presently leads engineering at Big Nerd Ranch and steals away time for Cocoa programming and for teaching the Cocoa bootcamp course, on which this book is based.
Nate Chandler is an instructor and senior software engineer at Big Nerd Ranch, where he helps maintain the Cocoa bootcamp course materials. Nate studied mathematics at the New College of Florida and applies the logical rigor he learned in that arena to his programming. An avid C++ enthusiast, Nate reads draft feature proposals for the standard as often as he can.