The major release doesn’t spell the death of Objective-C, though it will become the de facto language for developing iOS apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and more devices.
The language that was illustrated as Objective-C without C by Apple, is secure, modern, faster, compiler-optimized, and packed with a high level of interactivity that makes developing responsive, consumer-facing applications very easy. easy.
However, the release introduced the dilemma of making a choice between the two OOP languages: Swift and Objective-C. It brought a lot of confusion to the development workshops and created a space for discussions.
On a final note, Swift was declared a winner for years to come and when harnessed for iOS app development, it will bring many benefits to the top of the table.
Take a quick look at how the Swift can help you get ahead of the game:
1) Less coding required
In Objective-C, string manipulation, string concatenation, or class splitting requires more coding and involves writing boilerplate statements. In Swift, the length of the encoding is halved with the addition of new operators.
Also, the need to memorize the token is alleviated by string interpolation where variables can be inserted directly inline into the string. The probability of the application crashing due to an ordering error is reduced by the type inference system.
2) Dynamic library support
Dynamic library support for Swift started after the release of iOS 8. Before this, there were only static libraries, although Mac has enjoyed dynamic library support for a long time.
Dynamic libraries are the executable code that enables the latest Swift applications to link to changes or updates that new versions of the Swift language bring over time in an automated way. Dynamic libraries are included within the application package during download, but are external to the application executable, which mitigates the size of the application because external code is linked only as the language evolves.
3) Easy to read
With clean syntax, Swift has become easier to read and write code and looks a lot like plain English. The removal of all legacy conventions, such as parentheses for conditional statements, the @ symbol, semicolons on trailing lines, nesting of method calls inside square braces, and much more, has made the language more user-friendly. expressive and cleaner code.
In Swift, the comma-separated parameter list in parentheses is used for function and method calls to simplify the syntax, so Java, C#, C++, or Python programmers can easily read and adopt Swift.
4) Maintainability
For building executable applications, it is mandatory to maintain two files of Objective-C code to improve build time and efficiency. However, Swift removed the legacy requirement for two code files with X-code and the LLVM compiler.
Both compilers discover dependencies, perform incremental builds, and merge the Objective-C header (.h) and implementation (.m) files into a code (.swift) file automatically. In this way, Swift minimizes repetitive tasks, bookkeeping, and therefore workload, giving programmers more time to focus on building logic and improving code quality.
5) Faster and safer
In Objective-C, null pointers reduce the probability of an application crashing, but they introduce many bugs that take a good deal of programmers’ time to find and fix.
On the other hand, in the Swift language, the optional value is very clear as a compile error is generated for bad code, allowing the programmer to fix the code quickly, thus saving time and money. Also, during runtime blocking, Swift kicks in by stopping at the line of code where the optional nil variable is used so that the error can be fixed immediately.
6) Unified with memory management
In Objective-C, automatic reference counting is supported for object-oriented code and Cocoa APIs, but is not available for core graphs and procedural code, which in turn make programmers responsible for memory management.
Instead, in Swift, all compile-time memory management is handled by the ARC, since it works in both object-oriented and procedural code, and won’t require programmers to make any changes. of context. Also, the need to run the garbage collector to clean up unused memory is not required.
7) No more name collisions
The unavailability of namespace support causes code file name collisions, which is a linker error and does not allow the application to run. In Swift, the implicit namespaces are provided based on the destination where the code file resides, that’s why the same code file can exist for multiple projects without allowing the build to fail.
With namespace identifiers, classes or values can be easily differentiated and open source libraries, frameworks, or projects can be deployed on the fly, alleviating the stress of the same code filename collision during the integration of the open source project.
8) Performance
Under the hood, changes are constantly being made to Swift to improve the speed at which application logic executes. The improved performance of the GEMM algorithm by a factor of 1.4 and the FFT algorithm by a factor of 8.5 are the best examples of this. Accelerated development helps save a lot of money.
9) Playgrounds
With the games feature, programmers get the space for experiments by writing code or creating an algorithm and see their results at hand without having to wait until the project is fully built or emulator to test it.
It is more like an editor window where the code is compiled and executed as soon as it is written, which helps in data visualizations. All changes made during processing, from simple images to graphics and finite control elements, can be viewed in real time.
10) Open source
A year after release, the modern programming language Swift was declared open source. The announcement made the language more popular and widely used on various platforms or as back-end infrastructure.
Additionally, community feedback and developer support have made an invaluable contribution to language improvements.
conclusion
In 2015, in the “Most Loved Programming Language” nomination, the Swift language topped the stack due to the many benefits it offers over Objective-C. The language was released by Apple keeping in mind the future development of the iOS application. The sheer number of features has made iOS app developers implement Swift code during app development.
What are your thoughts? Do you also find the language equally important for iOS development? If so, don’t stop and start the next project leveraging Swift.