Swift Kick: Need more Swift programming examples? Go to Github!

Click the image to see Swift language projects on GitHub.

Apple’s documentation, The Swift Programming Language, is a pretty decent read, but its examples are geared around showing individual language features and not around building full-blown apps. With Swift having been released to registered Apple developers a mere three days ago and the NDA preventing the posting of screenshots of iOS 8 and Xcode 6 until their general release, we’re going to be short on books and detailed tutorials for the next few months. So how’s a developer to learn about Swift and still play within the rules of their developer agreement with Apple?

The answer: Github. More accurately, Swift projects on Github. And there are more of them than you might think.

As I write this (10:00 a.m. EDT, June 5, 2014), even though it’s been less than 72 hours since the beta of Xcode 6 (and therefore Swift) was made available for download, there are already about 350 repos on Github marked as being done in Swift. There may be more by the time you read this.

Update: As of 1:45 p.m. EDT, June 5, 2014, there are 370 Swift repos in Github.

Some of these repos are simple experiments with Swift and its syntax, some are tests of interacting with various API using Swift, some are the sort of mini-apps you build when learning a new language, and then there’s this:

That’s right: it’s an implementation of Flappy Bird in Swift. If you’ve always wanted to learn SpriteKit and now want to learn Swift, go to the FlappySwift repo on GitHub and kill two — ahem — birds with one stone.

Keep an eye on Swift projects in Github; I’m sure that their numbers will keep growing. And don’t forget to make your own contribution!