Design patterns are solutions to software design problems that we tend to see over and over again in real-world application design. These patterns are designed to help us create reusable and flexible code. Design patterns can also make the code easier to read and understand for other developers and also for ourselves when we look back at the code months/years later.

If we look at the examples in this chapter carefully, we will notice that one of the backbones of design patterns is the protocol. Almost all design patterns (the singleton design pattern is an exception) use protocols to help us create very flexible and reusable code.

If this was the first time that you really looked at design patterns, you probably noticed some strategies that you have used in the past in your own code. This is expected when experienced developers are first introduced to design patterns. I would also encourage you to read more about design patterns because they will definitely help you to create more flexible and reusable code.

Swift is a language that is rapidly changing and it is important to keep up to date. Since Swift is an open source project there are plenty of resources that will help you. I would definitely recommend bookmarking http://swiftdoc.org in your favorite browser. It has auto-generated documentation for the Swift language and is a great resource.

Another site to bookmark is https://swift.org. This is the main open source Swift site. On this site, you will find links to the Swift source code, blog posts, getting started pages, and information on how to install Swift.

I would also recommend signing up for some of the mailing lists on the swift.org site. The lists are located in the community section. The swift-users mailing list is an excellent list to ask questions on and is the list that Apple monitors. If you want to stay up-to-date with the changes to Swift then I would recommend the swift-evolution-announce list.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.