Mark Moeykens - SwiftUI's Visual Storyteller 30,000+ developers taught across 140 countries Big Mountain Studio - Utah's finest indie dev brand Books launched from coffee shops in Mexico City The man who gave SwiftUI a picture book Vermont boy turned Salt Lake City tech author 4-day work weeks fund a 10-book empire You remember images 60,000x faster than text Mark Moeykens - SwiftUI's Visual Storyteller 30,000+ developers taught across 140 countries Big Mountain Studio - Utah's finest indie dev brand Books launched from coffee shops in Mexico City The man who gave SwiftUI a picture book Vermont boy turned Salt Lake City tech author 4-day work weeks fund a 10-book empire You remember images 60,000x faster than text
Mark Moeykens - SwiftUI educator and Big Mountain Studio founder
SwiftUI Educator & Author

Mark Moeykens

The man who looked at a programming textbook and thought: needs more pictures.

Big Mountain Studio SwiftUI Visual Learning Salt Lake City
30K+ Developers Taught
140 Countries Reached
10+ Books Published

The Picture-Book Pioneer of iOS Development

Nobody handed Mark Moeykens a plan. After high school in Vermont, he joined the National Guard and worked temp jobs while figuring things out. Then he found computers, and everything accelerated. An Associate's in Computer Science from Champlain College - completed in 15 months, not the usual two years - and a programming career began.

Two decades later, he sits at an unusual intersection: full-time iOS developer at USANA Health Sciences in Salt Lake City by day, and by evening and three-day weekends, the author of perhaps the most visually distinctive technical book series in the Apple ecosystem. Big Mountain Studio is his vehicle, and the engine is a deceptively simple idea - code books should look more like picture books.

The SwiftUI Mastery series did not emerge from a publishing deal or a grand strategy. It grew out of a YouTube channel Mark started in 2015 as a personal notebook. He recorded talks for himself. Developers watched. They asked for more. They started paying him on Patreon. And slowly, methodically, he built a body of work that now reaches more than 30,000 developers across 140 countries.

That number is the result of a specific philosophy: people learn faster from images. Not as a marketing claim, but as applied cognitive science. Mark calls it the Picture Superiority Effect. Every page in his books pairs code with a visual. Every modifier gets a diagram. Every concept has a screenshot. A 900-page SwiftUI reference that developers actually read cover to cover.

"You remember pictures up to 60,000 times faster than text."

- Mark Moeykens, the thesis behind every book he writes

How Accidents Become Empires

1
🗻

The Accidental Channel

In 2015, Mark moved to Salt Lake City and joined USANA. He started a YouTube channel as a personal notebook - recording technical talks he wanted to remember. He did not intend to become an educator. Developers found it anyway.

2
📖

The First Book

Viewers asked for written versions. Mark started building SwiftUI visual references - one topic per page, one screenshot per concept. What came out was unlike any programming book on the market. Students called it a "hidden treasure."

3
🌍

The Global Classroom

Simple English, visual diagrams, and thorough examples crossed language barriers. Developers in 140 countries started downloading his free SwiftUI guide. 30,000+ times. The picture book had gone global.

30K+ Developers Using His Resources
140+ Countries Reached
1K+ SwiftUI Views Designed
4.69/5 Average Goodreads Rating

One Topic. One Page. One Picture.

Mark's books have rules. One topic per page. Code on the left, visual on the right. No walls of text. No chapters that assume readers already know what they're trying to learn. Written in simple English, deliberately, because many of his readers are not native English speakers.

The production workflow is unconventional. He writes in Apple Pages - not LaTeX, not a traditional publishing tool. He keeps a research Xcode project running in parallel, adding examples as they occur to him, logging questions in Apple Reminders organized by book category. When a section is ready, he takes code screenshots directly from Xcode with full syntax highlighting, then annotates them with visual connectors and diagrams.

He has submitted multiple feedback requests to Apple about annotation behavior in ePub formats. This is what "caring about your craft" looks like in practice - fighting the small battles that make the reading experience better, even when the adversary is Apple's own PDF pipeline.

The SwiftUI Mastery series now spans more than ten volumes: views, animations, SwiftData, Core Data, Combine, Charts, and most recently AI integration using Apple's FoundationModels framework. He soft-launched the Charts Mastery book from a coffee shop in Mexico City. The AI Mastery book includes bonus Xcode projects and what might be the most self-aware parenthetical in tech publishing: "AI can be dumb. I'm adding AI prompts to help you better get what you need."

A Lifestyle Business, On Purpose

Big Mountain Studio is not chasing venture capital. It never was. Mark is explicit about this: he built it as a lifestyle business designed to generate passive income with minimal ongoing attention. The 4-day work week at USANA - an arrangement he specifically sought out - gives him three-day weekends to write.

In 2022, he transferred his Patreon membership subscribers to Chris Ching of Coding with Chris (500K+ YouTube subscribers), one of his earliest supporters who had become a genuine friend and collaborator. The reasoning was pragmatic: Patreon meant constant video content creation. Books meant passive income. He chose the books.

The long-term plan is to eventually sell Big Mountain Studio once the systems and intellectual property protections are properly documented. Before that happens, there is a trip to Europe with his wife - who has never been - staying wherever they want for as long as they want, no itinerary, no deadline. His wife runs an Airbnb and creates content for TikTok and Instagram. They share a home recording studio in Salt Lake City.

He met her in Brazil, during a trip organized by a colleague where she was working as a tour guide for a family reunion. They stayed in contact through visits. Then they married. That is also the kind of story that doesn't come with a template.

Why His Books Work Differently

Traditional Coding Books
Retention
Recall Speed
Non-Native Friendly
Scan-ability
VS compared
Big Mountain Studio Books
Retention
Recall Speed
Non-Native Friendly
Scan-ability

Core principle: one topic per page - code example + visual diagram side by side - simple English - screenshot-first design

Ten Volumes and Counting

Free - 30K+ Downloads

SwiftUI Views Quick Start

Mastery Series

SwiftUI Views Mastery

Mastery Series

Advanced SwiftUI Views Mastery

Mastery Series

SwiftUI Animations Mastery

Mastery Series

SwiftUI Essentials: Scalable Apps

Mastery Series

Combine Mastery in SwiftUI

Mastery Series

Core Data Mastery in SwiftUI

Mastery Series

SwiftData Mastery in SwiftUI

2025 - New Release

SwiftUI Charts Mastery

2025 - FoundationModels

AI Mastery in SwiftUI

From Temp Jobs to 140 Countries

~1996
Champlain College, Burlington VT. Finishes his Associate's in Computer Science in 15 months - no summers off, no detours.
1998 - 2009
Full-stack web developer. Insurance (Progressive), ASP.NET and C#. Solid enterprise work. On-call requirements deliberately avoided.
2012 - 2015
Domain Architect and VP at Citizens Bank. Commercial loan management systems. Bank-level architecture. Vermont winters.
2015
Moves to Salt Lake City. Joins USANA Health Sciences as iOS developer. Names his side project after the surrounding mountains. Starts a YouTube channel to take personal notes.
2019
First SwiftUI books published. Joins the iOS Building Blocks podcast as a guest. The SwiftUI Mastery series begins.
2022
Transfers Patreon to Coding with Chris. Chooses books over video. Talks about lifestyle business design on the AppForce1 podcast.
2023
Core Data Mastery released. Featured on More Than Just Code podcast. Discusses using AI to decode Apple documentation before everyone else was doing it.
2025
Charts Mastery + AI Mastery published. Launches Charts Mastery from a coffee shop in Mexico City. Works on chapters from Thailand during downtime. Covers Apple's FoundationModels framework weeks after launch.

Where the Developers Are

Total Users
30,000+
Free Downloads
30,000+
Countries
140+
Twitter Followers
15,700+
GitHub Followers
664+

The Parts That Don't Fit a Resume

The YouTube Accident

Mark started his YouTube channel in 2015 to record technical talks for himself. He did not plan to teach. He did not plan to build a following. He uploaded. People watched. They kept watching. Patreon appeared. Books followed. Sometimes the best businesses start because someone was just taking notes.

The Brazil Story

His wife was working as a tour guide during a family reunion trip to Brazil that a colleague had organized. Mark went. They met. They stayed in contact across continents. Then they married. She now runs an Airbnb, creates TikTok content, and does voiceover work. They share a home studio. It's a good story.

The Mountain That Isn't His

Big Mountain Studio is named after the peaks visible from Salt Lake City - specifically Mount Timpanogos, which reminded him of the Swiss Alps. He grew up in Vermont, which has very different mountains. He named his brand after mountains he adopted, not mountains he was born near. There's a metaphor in there.

The Mexico City Soft Launch

In June 2025, Mark soft-launched SwiftUI Charts Mastery from a coffee shop in Mexico City. Not a press release, not a Product Hunt campaign - just a social post from a cafe table. He'd been working on chapters in Thailand during downtime weeks before. The book exists because travel has dead time, and he fills dead time with chapters.

What Makes Him Tick

Mark operates with a clarity about what he wants that is rarer than it sounds. He specifically sought out a job without on-call requirements. He negotiated a 4-day work week. He transferred his Patreon subscribers to a friend rather than grind out videos. Every decision points in the same direction: protect the time to build the thing that matters.

The thing that matters is the books. Not because they're the most lucrative path - a YouTube channel with his reach and quality could generate significantly more. But videos require constant production. Books, once written, sell while he's in Thailand or Mexico City or planning a European trip with his wife who has never been.

He is building toward an exit. Not a fire sale, but a proper handoff - systems documented, IP protected, policies in place. The Airbnb properties he and his wife are acquiring are part of the same plan: income that doesn't require him to be at a desk. The European trip with no itinerary is the north star. Everything else is aligned to make it happen.

His teaching philosophy is not a marketing angle. It's a genuine position about how humans learn. He designed over 1,000 SwiftUI views for his reference library. He recommends that absolute beginners go through Chris Ching's program before picking up his books - not because his books are too advanced, but because he knows what his books are for, and they're reference material, not onboarding.

That level of honesty - here's what my product is, here's what it isn't, here's something else you should try first - is unusual in a market where everyone claims to be the best starting point for everything.

  • Methodical builder who finishes what he starts
  • Lifestyle-focused without apology
  • Genuinely curious about how humans process information
  • Pragmatic about technology - uses Apple Pages, not fancy publishing tools
  • Honest about his own product's scope and limitations
  • Patient enough to write 900-page visual guides, one topic at a time

The Reviews That Actually Matter

★★★★★

"I can learn topics 10x faster because you're just showing me and telling me exactly what I need to know."

Brian W. - Student
★★★★★

"Probably the best book on a programming topic I've ever encountered."

Verified Amazon reviewer
★★★★★

"Mark's approach is very visual and verbally concise. This guide took me on a journey from a basic understanding of SwiftUI to a deep dive on its various components."

Goodreads reviewer
★★★★★

"A hidden treasure. Unlike anything else in the iOS development space."

Community member
★★★★☆

"The visual format makes concepts stick in a way that traditional documentation never could. I keep coming back to it as a daily reference."

iOS Developer
★★★★★

"Written in simple English, accessible to anyone. And I'm not a native speaker - that matters more than most authors realize."

International developer

"Soft-launching the new SwiftUI Charts Mastery book from a coffee shop in Mexico City."

- Mark Moeykens, doing it his way

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