My Experience in the Swift Developer Program 2023 at Apple Coding Academy

There's a reality you learn early in IT: working and studying at the same time is the daily life of a good developer. Things change fast in technology, there's always something new, and if you don't keep up you fall behind. That's not something I "discovered" — it's something I've always known.

I'm Dandan Chang Wang, co-founder of AtalayaSoft. I've been working as an iOS developer for years. In 2023, I wanted to make the definitive leap into SwiftUI, and the Swift Developer Program at Apple Coding Academy was the perfect opportunity to do it in a structured way. Along the way, I also got to review Swift fundamentals, explore new things like visionOS and AI, and fill in those small gaps we all accumulate over time.

Why I did it

My main motivation was clear: I wanted to learn SwiftUI in depth. By October 2023, SwiftUI was no longer optional — it was the direction the entire Apple ecosystem was heading. Companies needed to migrate from UIKit to SwiftUI, and I wanted to master the framework thoroughly, not just know enough to get by.

The Swift Developer Program 2023, taught by Julio César Fernández, offered exactly that: an intensive, progressive curriculum, 100% native, no shortcuts, no third-party libraries. On top of SwiftUI, the program included topics that piqued my curiosity — visionOS with the newly announced Apple Vision Pro, programming with AI assistants — and a solid review of basic and intermediate Swift that, as you'll see, turned out to be more useful than I expected.

What the program covered

The program ran from October to November 2023, with 132 hours of live classes (Monday through Thursday, 7 PM to 11 PM), plus a final project that extended through January 2024. The curriculum included:

• Swift 5.9 and functional programming: From data types and optionals to generics, macros, and Codable. The foundation everything else is built on.
• Concurrency, asynchrony, and networking with Async/Await: URLSession, the callback pattern, the transition to async/await, tasks, actors, Sendable, data races. Everything you need to work with networking safely.
• SwiftUI 5: Components, modifiers, MVVM architecture with Combine, the new Observable pattern, data-driven navigation, SwiftData, forms, animations. The most extensive module in the program.
• visionOS: Introduction to Apple Vision Pro development. Windows, volumes, immersive spaces, RealityKit. At the time, the Vision Pro had just been announced and was completely uncharted territory.
• Programming with AI assistants: How to use ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot as productivity tools, not as substitutes for knowledge.

Additional offline modules covered programming fundamentals, project management, Xcode, Git, DocC, and Widgets with SwiftUI.

What I learned (even in the "basic" modules)

I'll be direct: even the basic Swift modules taught me something. When Julio explained why things work the way they do — why optionals exist, how type casting works internally, what type inference actually implies — you realize there are things you use every day without fully understanding them.

It's like speaking a language: you can communicate perfectly in daily life, but structured training reveals grammar rules you were applying by intuition. That makes you a better professional, because you stop programming on autopilot and start making conscious decisions.

The three stars of the program

SwiftUI

By October 2023, SwiftUI was no longer "the future" — it was the present. Apple had been pushing SwiftUI as the recommended way to build interfaces for years, and more companies needed to migrate their apps from UIKit. The program dedicated its most extensive module to SwiftUI, covering everything from basic components to MVVM architecture, the new Observable pattern, and SwiftData. For someone coming from a UIKit background, this deep dive into SwiftUI was exactly what I needed.

visionOS

Apple had unveiled the Vision Pro at WWDC 2023, and the program included an introduction to visionOS development. At the time, almost no one had experience with this platform. Learning the pillars of visionOS — windows, volumes, and immersive spaces — and seeing how SwiftUI is at the heart of development for this new device was a unique opportunity. Julio César, who had the Vision Pro hardware, showed us firsthand how to develop for spatial computing.

AI as a development tool

The program went beyond Apple's technical stack. It dedicated a module to using AI as a productivity tool in development. In 2023, everyone was talking about ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, but few knew how to practically integrate these tools into an iOS development workflow. Learning how to ask the right questions, supervise responses, and create useful conversation flows was a cross-cutting skill I still apply today.

The final project: My Mangas

After the classes ended, it was time to prove what we'd learned with a real project. The challenge was to build "My Mangas," a SwiftUI app consuming a REST API with over 64,000 published manga titles. The app let users explore the catalog, search by title, filter by genre, theme, demographic, and author, and manage a personal collection tracking which manga they own, which volume they're reading, and whether their collection is complete.

The project was structured across four difficulty levels: basic, medium, advanced, and deluxe. I delivered the medium version, which included everything from the basic tier plus a complete filtering system across all data categories and differentiated layouts with list, detail, and grid views. I didn't reach the advanced version due to time constraints — cloud-based collection management with user login and Keychain token storage remained on the backlog — but the project forced me to integrate everything I'd learned: Swift, concurrency, networking, async/await, and SwiftUI.

Why this matters for our clients

At AtalayaSoft, we don't train our team as a hobby. We do it because our clients — companies with iOS apps in production — need developers who are up to date. Who master SwiftUI, understand modern Swift concurrency, and know how to work with REST APIs safely and efficiently.

When a CTO hires AtalayaSoft, they're not just hiring experience — they're hiring a team that actively invests in staying at the level the Apple ecosystem demands. This program is one example of that commitment.

Looking for an iOS team that combines enterprise experience with up-to-date training? At AtalayaSoft, we work 100% native and take continuous learning as seriously as the code we ship. Let's talk →