Tech Workshops: Swift – Rogue Tech Hub

A handful of attendees—including newcomers “referred” by RogueTechHub.com—participated in the Swift Tech Workshop as Dave Hendrix and Eric Turner guided us through the elements of Apple’s new programming language and the companion Xcode IDE.

The two presenters brought decades of software development experience to the fore as they demonstrated The Apple Way of developing a game app; showing how the bundled Sprite Kit and Scene Kit libraries essentially remove the burden of some of the more tedious aspects of coding for both 2D and 3D applications.

We learned about the basic elements, syntax, and differences between Swift and other programming languages, and “bridging” between Objective-C and Swift.

As is usual with presentations, the workshop was not without challenges. This time, we discovered that the version of OS X on the Mac Lab Computers was one-previous to the version required to run the demonstration app in which Dave and Eric had invested so much preparation time. The two managed a graceful recovery by turning the workshop into a group development session, as we all participated in finishing the app together.

The creative example app presented a robot that wended its way through a maze of 3D buildings to locate a coffee shack, and purchase essentials like band-aids and a rocket fuel dispenser. As a group, with Dave translating our ideas into code, we transformed the 3D buildings into 3D trees and created a second robot—sort of like a search party—after Robot #1 got lost among the trees! All had fun and, most importantly, we learned something! I learned to double- and triple-check the O.S. Version before the workshop. Nice recovery, guys!

We adjourned to The Brickroom on The Plaza in Downtown Ashland to discuss the workshop outcome over draft craft beers, and chat with newcomers to the CocoaHeads Group.

Tech Workshops is on hiatus until the Second Thursday in April (4/14/16), when Rob Head will present a hands-on workshop on Ruby. Join us!