How to learn to code in SwiftUI

We live in an era of content saturation. If you search for “how to learn SwiftUI,” the algorithm will bombard you with the famous “100 Days” challenge, charismatic YouTubers, and hundreds of Medium articles repeating the same basic concepts. While these resources are valuable for the masses, they suffer from a fundamental flaw: they often teach you how to copy and paste, but not how to think like an engineer within the Apple ecosystem.

Is it possible to become a SwiftUI expert by ignoring the community and going straight to the source? Not only is it possible, but it is the most robust way to understand the “why” behind the “how.”

This guide is not a “Hello World” tutorial. It is a structured learning methodology for developers who prefer official documentation, technical books, source code reading, and reverse engineering. Here, you will learn to fish in the open ocean, not in an aquarium.

This is the path for those who want to master SwiftUI without relying on influencers, bootcamps, or third-party blogs.

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Phase 1: Language Fundamentals (The Swift.org Documentation)

The number one mistake when learning SwiftUI is treating it as a standalone language. SwiftUI is nothing more than an abstraction layer (a DSL—Domain Specific Language) built on top of Swift. If you don’t understand the advanced features of Swift 5.9+, SwiftUI will look like black magic.

Forget video tutorials. Your bible will be Swift.org and the official book “The Swift Programming Language.”

1. The Type System and Generics

SwiftUI abuses generics. When you see VStack<Content>, you need to understand exactly what is happening under the hood.

• Your Task: Go to the official documentation and deeply study Opaque Types (some View). Understand why the compiler needs to know the exact return type at compile-time to optimize performance, even though we, as developers, want to hide it.
• Key Concept: some View is not a dynamic type; it is a static type with a hidden identity. Understanding this will save you from 90% of cryptic compiler errors.

2. Closures and Result Builders

All the visual syntax of SwiftUI (those nested braces that look like HTML) is actually Swift syntactic sugar called Trailing Closure Syntax and Result Builders (@ViewBuilder).

• Exercise: Don’t write UI yet. Write a function in pure Swift that accepts a closure as a parameter and tries to mimic the syntax of an HStack. Understanding how a function can build a list of objects from a block of code is vital.

3. Property Wrappers

@State, @Binding, @Environment. These are not magic words. They are structs that encapsulate read/write logic.

• Study: Read the Swift Evolution Proposal regarding Property Wrappers. Understand how they project a value ($variable) and how they manage the underlying storage (_variable).

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Phase 2: The Source of Truth (Apple Developer Documentation)

Most developers use Google. Experts use Xcode > Help > Developer Documentation (Cmd + Shift + 0).

Learning to read Apple’s documentation is a skill in itself. It is dry, technical, and precise. It is perfect.

1. The Protocol Hierarchy

Instead of searching “how to make a button,” search for the View protocol in the documentation.

• Observe that everything in SwiftUI is a struct that conforms to View.
• Analyze the lifecycle. Unlike UIKit (viewDidLoad), views here are disposable values. The system creates and destroys them thousands of times per second. The official documentation explains the concept of Identity vs. Lifetime.

2. Modifiers are Functions

In the documentation, you will see that .padding() does not modify the original view. It returns a new view that wraps the previous one.

• Experiment: Search the documentation for the return type of .padding(). You will see it is something like ModifiedContent<View, PaddingModifier>. This teaches you that SwiftUI creates a tree of nested views, not a single view with changed properties.

3. Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)

Do not design blindly. Apple has a manual called Human Interface Guidelines.

• Before programming a component, read its section in the HIG. If you are going to use a Toggle, read when it should be used and when it shouldn’t. Learning SwiftUI without learning the HIG is like learning to use a hammer without knowing what a nail is.

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Phase 3: Reverse Engineering with Official “Sample Code”

Apple offers not just documentation, but complete open-source projects in its Developer Sample Code gallery. This is your alternative to blog tutorials.

Learning Strategy: Dissecting Corpses

Do not copy the code. Download the project and “break” it.

1. Download “Food Truck” or “Fruit”: These are demo apps that Apple releases periodically.
2. Delete lines: Comment out a line of code and observe what stops working. Why was that GeometryReader there?
3. Trace the State: Use the “Find References” function in Xcode to see where a @State variable is born and how far it travels.
4. Analyze the Architecture: Apple doesn’t usually use strict MVVM in their examples; they often use a data-oriented architecture (@Observable). Study how they separate the model from the view without complex intermediate layers.

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Phase 4: Deep Understanding of Layout (No Videos)

The SwiftUI layout system is unique. It uses neither AutoLayout (constraints) nor Flexbox. It uses a three-step negotiation system. Learning this will prevent you from guessing properties until something works.

The Layout Algorithm (Pure Theory): You must internalize this mantra found in Apple’s technical engineering documents:

1. The Parent proposes a size: The container (e.g., VStack) tells the child: “You have this much space (e.g., 300×300).”
2. The Child chooses its size: The child (e.g., Text) says: “I only need 100×50.”
3. The Parent places the child: The parent respects the decision and places the child in its coordinate system (usually centered).

Practical Exercise (In Xcode, without tutorials): Use the .border(Color.red) or .background(Color.red) modifier on every view you create.

• This will allow you to visualize the invisible limits of the frames.
• Play with .frame(maxWidth: .infinity). Observe how the negotiation changes: now the child accepts all the space the parent offered.

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Phase 5: The Declarative Paradigm and State Management

This is where UIKit developers fail. They try to “force” changes in the UI. In SwiftUI, you change the data, and the UI is a consequence.

Mathematical Formula:

View=f(State)

The Dependency Graph

Imagine your application not as screens, but as a graph of nodes.

• Data Driven: If you use @Observable (the new Swift macro), any view reading a property of that class will automatically “subscribe” to it.
• Your Challenge: Create a simple app (a counter) without using any @State variable inside the View struct. Force yourself to put all state in an external class. This will force you to understand dependency injection (.environment) without anyone explaining it in a video.

State Debugging

Learn to use _printChanges().

• Inside the body property of any view, you can call Self._printChanges().
• This is a hidden debugging tool (undocumented in basic tutorials) that prints to the console exactly which variablecaused the view to redraw. It is the ultimate tool for understanding performance.

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Phase 6: Scalable Architecture (Books and Patterns)

Since we are not reading opinion blogs, we will rely on classic software architecture books and adapt them, or technical books from serious publishers (like O’Reilly or Pearson) regarding iOS development.

MVVM, TCA, or MVC?

If you ignore the trends on Twitter/X, you will realize that SwiftUI invites a very specific architecture: Unidirectional Data Flow.

1. Model: Your data (structs).
2. Store/ViewModel: Where the truth resides.
3. View: A dumb, declarative description.

Architecture Exercise: Try implementing the Redux pattern (or a simplified version) on your own.

• Create an enum Action with cases like .loadData, .deleteItem.
• Create a Reducer that takes the current state and an action, and returns a new state.
• Doing this from scratch, using only Swift documentation, will give you a level of understanding that no “Cloning WhatsApp” course can provide.

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Phase 7: Artificial Intelligence as a Socratic Tutor

Since you won’t use Google or StackOverflow (full of biased opinions), use AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)—but not to write code for you. Use it as a Socratic Tutor.

How to ask:

• Wrong: “Write me the code for a list.”
• Right: “Explain how the Identifiable protocol works in the context of a ForEach and why it is necessary for insertion/deletion animations. Use memory management analogies.”

Use AI to summarize official documentation or to explain complex compiler errors. It is your “Pair Programming” partner.

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Phase 8: Capstone Project (No Copying)

To graduate from this self-taught path, you must build something complex without looking at visual references from other developers.

The Challenge: A Generic REST API Visualizer

Do not build a To-Do list. Build a tool for developers.

• Requirements:
  1. The app must accept a URL from any public JSON API.
  2. It must use URLSession (using async/await, consulting the Swift Concurrency documentation).
  3. It must parse the JSON generically (without knowing the keys beforehand) and display it in a hierarchical list.

Why this project:

• It forces you to use Generics and advanced Codable.
• It forces you to handle Loading and Error States (Loading/Success/Failure).
• It forces you to create Recursive Views (a view that calls itself to display nested JSON).
• There are not many tutorials for this, so you will have to solve it by thinking.

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Conclusion: The Solitude of the Expert

Learning SwiftUI without the “100 Days” or YouTube channels is a lonelier and quieter path. It requires more reading, more abstraction, and a higher tolerance for frustration.

However, the result is different. The developer who learns with tutorials knows recipes. The developer who learns with documentation and fundamentals knows chemistry.

When Apple releases SwiftUI 6.0 or 7.0 and changes the recipes, those who memorized tutorials will have to wait for their favorite YouTubers to upload a new video. You, who learned to read the source and understand the foundations of the system, will simply open the documentation, read the Release Notes, and continue building the future.

That is the true “Swift Way.”

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Appendix: Your Allowed Toolkit

To keep you on the straight path, this is your whitelist of resources:

1. Xcode: Your IDE and your documentation.
2. Swift.org: For the base language.
3. Developer.apple.com: For frameworks, HIG, and WWDC videos (technical, not entertainment).
4. GitHub (Code Search): Search repositories with many stars (like Alamofire or Kingfisher libraries) not to use them, but to read their source code and see how experts structure their Swift projects.
5. Technical Books (Ebooks/Physical): Authors like Matt Neuburg (“Programming iOS”) who focus on technical depth.