Apple puts free Swift curriculum on iBooks, plans courses at US schools

Apple on Wednesday released "App Development with Swift," a free course available through the iBooks Store, which will also be coming to a handful of U.S. schools at the beginning of the fall semester.

The iBooks course is a full-year endeavor geared towards helping people "design fully functional apps, gaining critical job skills in software development and information technology," according to Apple. Swift is Apple's open-source programming language that works across iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

In the fall, six colleges will begin teaching the iBooks material: the Alabama Community College System, Columbus State Community College, Harrisburg Area Community College, Houston Community College, Mesa Community College and the San Mateo Community College District. HCC is in fact opening an iOS Coding and Design School, Apple noted.

"Select" high schools will simultaneously add it to their curricula, but Apple has yet to identify them by name.

App Development with Swift is a part of Apple's broader Everyone Can Code program, which the company noted will see materials used in over 1,000 U.S. schools this fall.

Encouraging Swift development likely has multiple benefits for Apple. In general it should foster the creation of more apps for its platforms, but in the long run it may also build up a potential workforce and further cement Swift and Apple platforms as a standard.

33 Comments

smaffei 237 comments · 11 Years

About 7 years ago

A cheaper workforce is more like it.

But, it won't work. Learning a language is a far stretch from writing software and the employing core principles of Computer Science. I saw the same thing growing up in the 80s with Logo and BASIC. They were supposed to be the "everyman" languages. People still couldn't learn those and did just what they needed to pass the course.

And, frankly, do you want your apps written / debugged by a real software engineer or someone who learned via seminars and online courses?

emig647 2446 comments · 20 Years

About 7 years ago

@smaffei

The race to the bottom of cheap apps has proven to me people want cheap software, not professional software in a lot of cases. I can see games and "play apps" being written by those who are not properly trained and are SO warriors.

I think this is good for everyone though. The more exposure that Swift gets, the more implanted future it will have. Not just in the iOS and Mac world, but the open source linux world as well. I'm quite excited to see it take off in the server side and machine learning world.

I think offering these classes as tech electives is great! There are too many colleges that think that C++ is still a dominating factor. I have seen some that still teach Pascal! Hopefully this helps start moving the bar for more modern languages and frameworks.

bobcat62 29 comments · 21 Years

About 7 years ago

Free course materials... To make it easier for you to proudly train your "Fresher" H1-B replacement.

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 7 years ago

smaffei said:

A cheaper workforce is more like it.
But, it won't work. Learning a language is a far stretch from writing software and the employing core principles of Computer Science. I saw the same thing growing up in the 80s with Logo and BASIC. They were supposed to be the "everyman" languages. People still couldn't learn those and did just what they needed to pass the course.

And, frankly, do you want your apps written / debugged by a real software engineer or someone who learned via seminars and online courses?

Not everyone is capable of becoming a full-time programmer, but if this makes the resources for those who do want to pursue that path easier to study and program, that's a good thing.

GeorgeBMac 11421 comments · 8 Years

About 7 years ago

smaffei said:

A cheaper workforce is more like it.
But, it won't work. Learning a language is a far stretch from writing software and the employing core principles of Computer Science. I saw the same thing growing up in the 80s with Logo and BASIC. They were supposed to be the "everyman" languages. People still couldn't learn those and did just what they needed to pass the course.

And, frankly, do you want your apps written / debugged by a real software engineer or someone who learned via seminars and online courses?

That is so very true...
That is the very split that developed between the mainframe COBOL/FORTRAN coders and the PC guys working with the variety of languages.

A big part of that was that the PC was pointed at individual users rather than critical corporate infrastructure. So it required that the development had to be maintainable and upgradeable. That requirement meant that:
- It had to work -- ALWAYS and with consistent reliability and accuracy!
- People other than the original coder had to be able to pick it up and either fix it or upgrade it.
- There had to be a wide enough knowledge base of the language that the code was not reliant on a hand full of specialists...

But importantly, even though all that is true, there still remains a huge demand for simple, one-off, single user, non-critical applications that make people's lives better... That is the point where Jobs and Woz started at -- and it still exists today...