Creating Hello World App in Swift Using Xcode 6

The Hello World tutorial was the first programming article written for our iOS programming course. As Apple released Xcode 6, the tutorial is no longer up-to-date. We received quite a lot of emails about the tutorial update. So here you are. Instead rewriting the same tutorial in Objective-C, we’ll show you how to create the Hello World app in Swift. What’s more, we create a screencast for you.

If this is the first time you come across the tutorial, you may wonder why we teach you building a Hello World app. This programming tutorial is written for absolute beginners. We want to encourage you to learn programming. So the first app should be very simple. Despite its simplicity, the “Hello World” app serves a few purposes:

• It gives you an overview about the syntax and structure of Swift, the new programming language of iOS.
• It also gives you a basic introduction to the Xcode 6 environment. You’ll learn how to create a Xcode project and lay out your user interface using Storyboard. Even if you’ve used Xcode 5 before, you’ll learn what’s new in the latest version of Xcode.
• You’ll learn how to compile a program, build the app and test it using the Simulator.
• Lastly, it makes you think programming is not difficult. I don’t want to scare you away from learning programming. It’ll be fun.

You’ll need to use Xcode 6 (or up) to work on the Hello World project. If you haven’t upgraded to Xcode 6, just download it via this direct iTunes link.

Okay, let’s get started.

For your reference, you can download the sample Xcode project from here. I hope you enjoy our first screencast. Feel free to leave us comment and share your thought about the tutorial.

If you like the screencast, check out our new Swift programming book and get the free chapter to understand how the Hello World app works.