A handy tool makes a handy person. This is very true for creating software, too. Xcode is the integrated development environment (IDE) for writing, compiling, debugging, and building code for iOS application development. The first part of the chapter walks you through the installation and steps for getting it up and running. All the topics in this book come with sample code. You will need to use Xcode to learn from these sample projects, and you will use Xcode to create world-class iOS apps, too.

For iOS programming, Swift is the latest and greatest programming language released for iOS 8. The chapters in this part will give you enough knowledge to read and write the sample code in Swift. You will find learning Swift a very natural extension from your use of Java, and you will surely feel comfortable using the code from this book as your own code.