I like this book because it gives thorough examples of what the language entails, what terms are, and what to remember. I don't think it's for an absolute beginner though. I am an absolute beginner to any programming language. There are some apps out there that stick to the VERY basics that will help before you should decide to read this book (like swifty) and yes they're paid but it helps me to go through those exercises then run each bit of example code I see in a playground to see the results. Then I play around with the code to see what will change if I start to mess with it. I am on hour 6, and it's getting a little tough for me to follow, so I'm looking up other resources about the book's content before going back and reading more. The amount of exercises needs to be increased. All in all though, I am learning swift, and this book was a gift to me. It's helpful and i like it. Sorry Sam's, no 5 stars yet though. Happy reading! let var learnCode = "do it now!"