APPLEāS NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE: SWIFT
Apple has added a new name to the list of programming languages. Its called the āSWIFTā programming language. Swift, Appleās new programming language took about 4 years to get developed. Swift will replace the Objective-C programming language in few months to come.
Appleās Swift is a multi-paradigm programming language developed to use with IOS and OS X. Swift provides new, cleaner and more robust tools for developing applications. Craig Federighi, Appleās chief of engineering says that Swift is āsafe, modern and powerful.ā
Design of swift
The Swift programming language combines features from other modern languages such as Python, C# and Haskell and at the same time includes the best features of Objective-C and C.
Swift is built with the LLVM : Low Level Virtual Machine compiler included in Xcode 6 beta. It uses the Objective-C runtime, so that it allows Objective-C, Objective-C++ and Swift code to run within a single program. The compiler is optimized for performance while the language is optimized for development without compromising on either.
Swift was described as āObjective C without the Cā by Appleās VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi during its debut. Also, Swift will provide a speed advantage for developers.
Swift is similar to Objective-C in terms of basic numeric types, C operators, Closures, Control statements and so on. While it differs from Objective-C in that header files are not required, statements donāt end with semi-colon, operators can be redefined for classes, generic programming, no exception handling and many more.
It wonāt be wrong to say that Swift is a language which includes almost everything that developers may need to build their softwares.
The tools Swift includes
This not only includes an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) – an interface where coders can write code for their softwareābut also several other tools, like a debugger that can help weed errors from their code.
It also provides whatās known as āinferred typing,ā which basically means that coders donāt require to spend more time in defining what types of variables they are using.
Swift is a wonderful way to write iOS and OS X apps, and will continue to develop with new features and capabilities.
So, lets see how Swift will make the tasks of developers easy to build apps for iOS and OS X platforms. š