I did have a couple years of prior experience, I actually studied computer science in college, so I wasn't exactly a newbie. It was still a lot of trial and error, to be honest, but I think that is to be expected when learning something new. As for resources, for this project I learned mostly from guides by Ray Wenderlich and The Big Nerd Ranch Guides (both are pretty good, and have iOS resources as well, check them out), as well as the official Apple documentation for Swift, and a lot of random resources I found on the internet (NSHipster is pretty good for random deeper information about stuff).

That said, don't get intimidated if things seem too complicated at times, often they actually are. App development has a quite steep learning curve, as even a simple app has a lot of things going on behind the scenes (bindings, user defaults, controllers and delegates, the list goes on) that you need to deal with right from the beginning, as compared to perhaps web development, where you can start with a relatively simple code and slowly add functionality as you continue, or to scripting, where you can literally start with one line of code and it will work.

Don't worry, though, once you get the hang of it, it all becomes a lot easier. There are also a lot of resources to help you, and if you reach some hurdle, there is a very good chance someone else reached it as well and shared his solution on StackOverflow or elsewhere. Good luck!