Learning Swift one step at a time

I will start this post by quoting a statement from Gandhi,

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Learning never hurts. And if it is meant for your future job hunt with better work environment and salary it's worth it.

As I talked about it in some of my last posts, I have been learning Swift step by step for quite a long time now. It's fun and struggle too since till now I was conditioned to think in Objective-C way as opposed to standard swift.

In order to facilitate learning I found very useful resource a year back. This week in Swift. If you haven't yet, please take a time to register for their newsletters. It's really beneficial if you are learning to dive into Swift development now or later.

I have created a sample Xcode project with different files based on the concept I am going to learn. Files are organized by name and are kept as cohesive as possible. This will give me pointers if I ever want to apply these concepts in real project. Writing a code from tutorial as opposed to just gazing over it makes a big difference. When you write a code, you actually think before typing it out, come across crashes, compiler errors, warnings and this way you are really aware of what's going on inside that demo code someone else has provided.

Sometimes I come across duplicate articles with same information I learned. I do not skip it. Rather, this time I try to implement that concept standalone. Which boost my confidence that I really did understand the concept and I am comfortable with it.

Don't make it fast. Take your time. Do not go through tutorials if you are tired or drowsy. It will not make you any good. It's been almost a month since I started learning things. I usually do not do it over weekdays since those are cramped ones and I have other thoughts in my mind.

Weekends are usually best. Especially Friday and Saturday nights. You have ample of time and no rush from your project manager. That is where most productivity lies. Do you think it's boring? meaningless? cumbersome? tiresome? Nops.

Cause I love doing it. If I don't like any post or it's difficult to follow the concept, I will simply turn over to Google and find any other online blog post which will explain the same concept, but in the language fathomable to me. Like they say,

Love what you do, do what you love

Sometimes I am burnt up to do any productive. In that case I take a rest, watch few episodes of my favorite series, read books and get back to work when everything is alright.

I hope there is at least one person out there thinking just like me. Inspire yourself, get motivated, stand up and take a stance to learn something new. If not every day, at least every week. If my post inspires at least one person to do what they love, I will consider my time and my words finally paid off