Yesterday at topcoder we launched a new series to help developer learn Apple's new development language, Swift. We are extremely optimistic about this language, as are others, and we are making a huge investment in it at topcoder.
Over the next 12 weeks or so, we are offering up to $500,000 in development cash and prizes as an incentive to get you started. Now is the time to start learning Swift and we've develop a series to help you #getswifter. To get the ball rolling, we are going to give the first 1000 participants $100 each for completing this Playground challenge.
TL;DR Head over to our Swift site for the complete run-down.
I've been heads-down with Swift for about a month now and I really like the language. I was never a huge fan of Objective-C but I really love the concepts and ease of use of Swift. Its has all the cool C features with the look and feel of a scripting language. Most of my time is spent in Playgrounds, essentially the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of REPLs". Playgrounds are a great way to learn and we'll be leveraging them to the fullest in a number of our challenges.
I'm running the program from the community side which involves developing the Swift site, writing challenges, interacting with members on the discussion boards and social networks, grading challenges and reaching out to guys that are much smarter than me in the Swift community for help and guidance. Should be an interesting 3 months!
We've split the #getswifter series up into three stages:
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Learn Swift I've developed a number of Playground challenges to introduce you to the new Swift concepts and syntax. It's pretty fun and shouldn't take you more than an hour or so to complete.
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Fun Challenges After getting your feet wet in Playground, it's time to jump into some more advanced challenges to build your skills. Compete in algorithm challenges, mashup some APIs on your phone, build a CLI or write a simple physics game. New, exciting challenges start each week. I even launched a "Narinder Pong" challenge to build an 80's style pong game using Narinder's head as the ball.
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Real World Challenges We've lined up some great sponsors that want to build Swift demos, POCs and production quality apps. There's nothing better than real world experience with real customers!
Head over to swift.topcoder.com and get started with Swift!
