Among the numerous announcements at the Apple WWDC 2014 event in San Francisco, the announcement that brought the largest cheers and applause from the audience was the announcement of ‘Swift’, a new programming language. Apple’s Craig Federighi said that Apple wanted to create a language without the complications of Objective-C and they came up with ‘Swift’.
One of the biggest advantages of ‘Swift’ is that the developers will be able to have a real time view of the results as they type the code which was not possible in Objective-C. The press release for Swift reads as follows
Swift is a powerful new programming language for iOS and OS X® that makes it easier than ever for developers to create incredible apps. Designed for Cocoa® and Cocoa Touch®, Swift combines the performance and efficiency of compiled languages with the simplicity and interactivity of popular scripting languages. By design, Swift helps developers write safer and more reliable code by eliminating entire categories of common programming errors, and coexists with Objective-C® code, so developers can easily integrate Swift into their existing apps. Xcode® Playgrounds make writing Swift code incredibly interactive by instantly displaying the output of Swift code.
To make the transition from Objective-C to Swift smooth, developers can write the code such that Swift can reside side by side with Objective-C in the same application. Apple has published a 500page guide for Swift language on the iBooks store and developers can start using Swift which is available in XCode 6 beta.
