The software offerings from Apple at the latest annual Worldwide Developers Conference held in San Francisco may not have been able to grab that much attention but, the new programming language developed by the company certainly created a lot of buzz. Known as ‘Swift’ this programming language is turning out to be the preferred choice of mobile app developers. The language has been developed to offer an easier, faster way of developing products for different Apple devices like iPod, iPhone and Mac computers. Chris Lattner is the creator of this new programming language which offers the same features as that of the existing language, Objective-C but, in a more friendly and easy way.

So, what is Apple Swift Language?

Swift happens to be a new programming language developed by Apple to build apps on iOS X and iOS. The language comes with the promise that apps developed with it will run more smoothly and faster as compared to apps developed using the Objective-C language.

Swift has been developed over a period of more than 4 years and has the features of many languages like Python, Ruby, C# and Haskell. Therefore, Apple has provided aspiring mobile app developers with an appealing modern language that will allow easier and faster development. Though, the development of the language has taken a lot of hard work but, it has definitely paid off. Swift is not only completely binary compatible with Objective-C libraries but also has close relationships with Cocoa frameworks.

Some of the Core Features of Apple Swift Language

The best part about the Swift programming language is that it has been specifically designed to help people quickly and easily build programs for iPad, iPhone and Mac. Objective-C’s complicated trappings have been replaced by an easy to pickup simplified syntax which still feels very familiar. Some of its core features are as follows:

• Closures (identical to blocks in Objective-C and C) combined with function pointers
• Generics – what it has
• Multiples return values and tuples
• Concise and fast iteration over a collection or range
• Functional programming patterns, for example – filter and map
• Struts supporting protocols, extensions, methods.  

The  Facts that Apple Swift Has in it

• The fact that the language was specifically designed for safety can be understood from the fact that, before use variables are to be initialized, overflow checking of integers and arrays as well as automatic memory management.
• The updated Xcode IDE will of course be integrated with Swift. The ‘interactive playground’ featured by it is expected to allow mobile app developers to edit their code as well as watch how the changes made affect the app that too, in real time.
• Another worthy feature of the Swift programming language is expected to be its speed which will easily surpass Python and Objective-C when it comes to implementation of complex object sort.
• A major benefit available to developers is the fact that, both Objective-C and Swift make use of the same compiler. Thus, an application can have source codes from Swift, C and Objective-C. It is significantly expected to assist developers familiar with the old programming language.

How good is the Apple Swift Programming Language?

This new language has turned out to be a drastic departure from the traditional ways of programming. Specific design patterns are liked by Apple which is the reason why it developed Cocoa and Objective-C. Though, Swift adheres to the same thing but, it goes a bit further by formalizing some patterns that were adopted in a haphazard way. Swift turns out to be quite different from the Objective-C language and majority of changes have taken place in basic syntax of the language.

There is also good news for consumers as the apps by Apple are expected to offer them with much more functionality than what was previously available. Though, the credit for that mainly goes to Swift but, the release of powerful SDKs like TouchID API and HomeKit has also turned out to be beneficial. Well, the question that arises now is that whether developers should really care about this new programming language? Well, they should start to care as Apple believes that future of iOS development will be largely directed by this new language.

Let’s Conclude It That Way:

Apple is continuing to put its every effort to make this new language as safe as possible. Though, Swift is not a complete language and work is still in progress but, when the work finishes, mobile app developers are expected to get something that will make their tasks a lot easier and smoother. The future of Objective-C is not yet doomed as it has already been stated that both these languages can be used at the same to develop apps, however it needs to be seen whether this new language can create an impact that will even encourage non-Apple developers to program using the Swift language.