Black History Month is a time to learn about, reflect on, and celebrate the impact and accomplishments of the Black community. In honor of Black History Month, we have curated a handful of outstanding contributions from the Black Swift community to acknowledge and celebrate their impact on the Swift ecosystem.
From our partners:
Creating educational resources
There are many Black developers in the Swift community creating educational resources to help people develop their Swift skills. Kyle Lee (aka Kilo Loco) has created a wealth of hands-on tutorials for Swift — including language fundamentals, UI programming, open source frameworks, and more — always delivered with fun and enthusiasm. Kyle has impacted thousands of Swift programmers, and his relaxed teaching style makes learning Swift even more approachable.
Pushing Swift in new directions
Marc Aupont is pushing the boundaries of the Swift ecosystem by using Swift in embedded systems. Learn about how Marc built a robot car using a Raspberry Pi running Swift in his talk from try! Swift NYC 2019: Swift Without Screens – Powering Connected Devices. Marc goes into greater detail on writing Swift code for Raspberry Pi in the iPhreaks podcast episode: iPS 296: Swift on Raspberry PI.
Ish ShaBazz is presenting the Swift community with a different perspective by emphasizing the human side of programming. In his powerful talk from SwiftFest Boston 2019, Programming with a Purpose, Ish tells his inspirational story of how he discovered his purpose, and the valuable lessons he learned along the way, including conquering imposter syndrome with curiosity, and overcoming fear in programming, public speaking, and life.
Surfacing Black role models through app development
Sonja Sulcer used Swift and SwiftUI to build her first app, Encourage Her, to showcase inspirational quotes from women entrepreneurs of color. Though Sonja only learned to code a few months ago, she is using her skills to inspire and motivate young women, including her four-year-old daughter, Zofia, who is already learning to code!
To help young readers discover books written by and featuring people of color, Kaya Thomas created We Read Too. Not only has Kaya helped surface role models through her app, she is also a motivating and relatable role model for Swift programmers. Through her writing and public speaking, Kaya talks about the journey of bringing an app idea to life in Swift, including how to overcome technical roadblocks during development. In her blog post, Getting Stuck, Kaya discusses a problem she faced when working on We Read Too’s suggestion view, and how she leveraged others in the Swift community to help her solve the problem.
Join in on the celebration!
We are grateful for the perspectives, resources, and innovation that the Black community has brought to Swift. Please join in on the Black History Month celebration over on the Community Showcase forum and share how the Black community has made a positive impact on your journey with Swift. If you are a member of the Black Swift community, we highly encourage you to join Black in Swift to connect with others in the community!
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