Looking for book recommendations for game development

Is there an advantage to Swift vs. Objective C when programming game apps?

Maybe objc gives some easier access to low levels. But the key issue is which language do you master best ?

Can anyone recommend a decent book for beginners?

I don't know how much beginner you are.

For true beginner, this may be worth reading:

h ttps://www.raywenderlich.com/71-spritekit-tutorial-for-beginners

There was a book (a bit outdated unfortunately) which was pretty didactic, with some chapters on games:

Beginning iPhone Development with Swift

Exploring the iOS SDK

David Mark | Jack Nutting | Kim Topley | Fredrik Olsson | Jeff LaMarche

But looking for online course is probably a better option now to have uptodate material.

Objective C code is easier to 'read' but the future bends towards Swift, unfortunately (IMHO).

The book that took me easily from Visual Basic to Xcode/Objective C was "Sams Teach Yourself iPhone Aplication Development in 24 Hours" by John Ray and Sean Johnson. The key was not so much coding as the technique of creating a project using the Xcode app. That book is 10 years old. I suspect there is a more recent version that uses Swift.

People say the Stanford online course is very good.

Easier to read ? humhh, not for me. But that's like a human language, which is easier to read ?

Stanford course is really great as it explains the inner mechanisms and gives strong arhcitecture advices.

So, once you have started, it is absolutely excellent to improve your design technics.

But it is a little bit like starting music with solfege or foreign language with grammar. That's just an opinion, once again, Stanfoprd course (Swift) is gorgeous and learned me a lot.

+1

>Can anyone recommend a decent book for beginners?

Keep in mind that if you're talking about dead tree versions, they tend to reflect outdated or beta code examples, risking yet more confusion for the newcomer as they risk learning skills they'll need to unlearn when working with current tools, etc. You don't want to ask for help on something that is no longer in use.

iTunes U is a good place for digital versions, but again, be aware of current vs. outdated reference materials, regardless.

If you really want to get ahead of things, build an iOS game, then learn/use Catalyst to attact the macOS crowd.

Good luck.