With Swift into it’s second year of life in the public there are more and more tutorials appearing on the internet everyday which is a boon to new and experienced programmers alike. Of course there is a lot of rubbish out there to sort through. many just rip off other peoples work, some don’t get into enough detail to be helpful, and others are just not well written. I have compiled a list of what I think are some of the best tutorials currently out there on the interwebs.
A couple things to note. I did not include anything that was behind a pay wall, I just wanted to focus on what was free in this instance. This is also not an overly long list because I wanted to focus on collections and resources that are really worth while. And if anyone has any they think should be on the list then let me know and I will definitely take a look! So without further ado let’s get started.
Though most of this list is not in any particular order this site really should be at the top. There are currently 37 individual tutorials online! And there is a full range of topics covered so you can pick and choose the ones that are most interesting and most relevant to you. They are structured in a logical, easy to follow way with good explanations on what is being done and why. The tutorials are free but if you find that you’ve really gained a lot from them you can donate as a way of saying thank you (and I would encourage it to help make sure this resource keeps going and continues to be updated with each update to Swift as well).
This site has a lot of tutorials with most of the ones in the past year written in Swift. It covers a lot of topics, many of them somewhat advanced, such as integrating LinkedIn logins, using Core Spotlight, and using Alamofire in your project, to name a few. So this might not be the first stop for someone just learning Swift and iOS development. But as you start developing more complex apps and getting more ambitious this could be a good resource for that next level of programming.
There are a lot of really in-depth tutorials on this site so if there is a subject you are interested in learning and you see a matching tutorial for it on We Heart Swift then trying one from this site is likely going to be a good choice. There are usually a lot of screenshots with each tutorial and good write ups on what is being done and why so they are easy to follow along with and learn from. There is not a specific tutorial section (that I can see) so you have to do a bit of searching, but it is no worse navigation wise then most of the sites out there (though it would greatly benefit from a bit more organization).
Getting started with TDD in Swift
This is a tutorial for one single app, a fizz buzz app, which is one of those apps that is very much a staple of early programming courses. What is really great about this tutorial is that it is very detailed, has wonderful explanations, and many gifs to make it a delightful read. If you are just looking for a tutorial that will give you some extra practice, and be fun to boot, then you can’t go wrong with this one. And send Yvette some kind words and encourage her to do more tutorials in the future!
A good collection of tutorials in Swift. What is nice about this site is that there are tutorials for Apple Watch, which are not exactly common at the moment, as well as tutorials for lesser covered subjects, like the Contacts framework. It is a bit code heavy at times with not as much discussion and description of what is being done and why compared to some other sites, so its probably not the best for a total beginner, but someone with a basic understanding of Swift would likely find the tutorials useful and just comprehensive enough.
The downside to this site is that there is so much stuff it can sometimes be challenging to navigate through it to find exactly what you are looking. The upside is that there is so much content. Despite the name of the site there is actually a sizable team of people contributing to posting tutorials, and articles, and was early out of the gate with tutorials for Swift as soon as it launched. The quality of tutorials does vary a bit due to the fact that there are many people creating them. The strength of them is that they go into quite a bit of depth and detail explaining the why and how of the code. The downside, most of the apps lack a really strong design aesthetic. Even with the downsides it is still a hugely valuable resource to look into.
A collection of articles/lessons/tutorials from a number of different contributors. They are generally well written and don’t go into extreme detail, but don’t just gloss over important points either. Navigation is not the best, and if your looking for tutorials that result in a full app being built there is not a big selection of that. But they do cover topics, such as UI design, in a more depth then other sites and which often gets ignored, so from that perspective it might well offer something new for you.
This is a huge collection of resources over on GitHub all in one convenient place. Everything is structured into key topics on the main page and contains links to tutorials, articles, and source code as well. Searching for a specific topic is pretty straightforward and most of the resources look to be very detailed and in-depth. This one was new to me, submitted by hsavit1 over on /r/Swift. Thanks for the heads up on this one!
YouTube Swift tutorial playlist
I can’t really comment on which of these videos is good or not. But there is a lot of videos, 330 at the moment to be exact. So I am sure there is bound to be something good within that list. Once I have a chance to take a look in more detail I might be able to highlight some of the better ones but until then you can take a look around yourself.
So this is not exactly a collection of tutorials, more like lessons on some of the key subjects such as dictionaries, arrays, and tuples. It is worth pointing out because the language and writing is very clear and readable and when it comes to quick reminders on lets say how to reorder and sort elements in an array it is quite handy. Everyone is different so this might not appeal to everyone but it will likely be what some people are looking for.
Manitoba Ninja 
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