You don't need to understand Object-C to learn Swift 2 anymore. What you do need is new way of thinking. This book is the key. Swift is not a language that is intuitive for most C and C++ programmers. Swift is not Object-C. It is much more versatile, but the artifacts of Object-C make Swift a little more difficult to absorb. This book gives the C and C++ programmer an introduction to Swift in which you will need to know very little about Object-C to get yourself to a place where you can write programs in the language.