# Flight School By [Mattt](https://nshipster.com/authors/mattt). Published 2019-02-01. Canonical URL: [Flight School](https://flightdotschool.com/) is a book series for advanced Swift developers that explores essential topics in iOS and macOS development through concise, focused guides. Today, I’m excited to announce updates to our guides to [Swift Codable](https://flightdotschool.com/books/codable) and [Numbers](https://flightdotschool.com/books/numbers), as well as a brand new [Guide to Swift Strings](https://flightdotschool.com/books/strings). Everything is up-to-date with the latest from Swift 5 and Xcode 10.2, and now — _for the first time_ — available in print! If you like NSHipster and are looking for something a bit longer, I think you’re gonna love what Flight School has to offer. --- [![Flight School Guide to Swift Codable](https://nshipster.com/assets/flight-school-guide-to-swift-codable-3c9f6b974928ac80.svg)](https://flightdotschool.com/books/codable "Flight School Guide to Swift Codable") [![Flight School Guide to Swift Numbers](https://nshipster.com/assets/flight-school-guide-to-swift-numbers-62b9f44af5cf3787.svg)](https://flightdotschool.com/books/numbers "Flight School Guide to Swift Numbers") [![Flight School Guide to Swift Strings](https://nshipster.com/assets/flight-school-guide-to-swift-strings-1ab20c01dd0bb28c.svg)](https://flightdotschool.com/books/strings "Flight School Guide to Swift Strings") ## Why I’m Writing Flight School As software developers, our jobs require us to learn a variety of different platforms, programming languages, frameworks, and tools. In spite of their differences, most technologies share a common foundation in concepts like floating-point arithmetic, data interchange, and string encoding — the kinds of things you might find in a typical Computer Science curriculum. But for those of us who came into programming from unconventional backgrounds, (for instance, I studied philosophy and linguistics as an undergraduate), the weight of all of this can feel overwhelming at times. And even if you did study CS in college, it may be hard to relate the theory of your coursework (what you can remember of it, anyway) to the realities of your day job. I’m writing [Flight School](https://flightdotschool.com/) to explore important concepts in software development in a way that’s informative, accessible, and entertaining. Each book is short enough to be read over a weekend (or perhaps coffee breaks over the course of a work week). Each chapter is filled with practical information that’s backed by examples that you can experiment with for yourself in Xcode Playgrounds. The forthcoming [_Guide to Strings_](https://flightdotschool.com/books/strings) is our newest and most ambitious release yet, covering everything from the Unicode® standard and Swift 5 `String` internals to binary-to-text encoding, parser generators, and natural language processing. If you’ve ever felt like you wanted to get a handle on text _once and for all_, this is the book for you. It’ll be available to download next Friday, February 8th, and you can pre-order a copy for yourself and download a sample chapter now. --- The response from Flight School readers since launching earlier last year has been overwhelming, and I couldn’t be more excited to share this with everyone. I look forward to continuing to share new and interesting things on NSHipster and Flight School, and thank you for your continued support. 🧡