Welcome to the forum. A first comment: edit your text to make each question clear and post easier to read. And avoid asking so many questions on so different topics. Anyway, I'll try to provide some answers. Q1: How should I best start learning? For example, is Swift Playgrounds the right first step? My personal advice: start with tutorials from Apple like 'Develop in Swift fundamentals'. Or go and visit https://developer.apple.com/pathways/. If you want to learn SwiftUI, select it. Q2: How should I continue afterwards to gain further knowledge, possibly in areas like system architecture, cybersecurity, or cloud computing (even though I don’t want to commit too early to one direction)? You will find resources here again: https://developer.apple.com/pathways/. My advice to continue, after step 1, is to imagine and develop a complete (yet simple) app. That's how you will put what you learned in practice. And then, each time you fall on a problem, ask the forum for help. Q3: Can you recommend a learning schedule