The major release is not the death of Objective-C, although it will become the de facto language for iOS app development for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and more.
The language, which was illustrated as Objective-C without C by Apple, is safe, modern, faster, compiler-optimized, and packed with a high level of interactivity that makes developing responsive, consumer-facing applications very easy. simple.
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 leveraged for iOS app development, it will bring a lot of 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 needs more coding and involves writing boilerplate statements. In Swift, the length of the encoding is cut in half with the addition of new operators.
Also, the need to memorize the token is alleviated with string interpolation where variables can be inserted directly inline into the string. The probability of the application crashing due to a request error is reduced with the type inference system.
2) Dynamic library support
Dynamic library support for Swift began after the release of iOS 8. Before this, there were only static libraries, although Mac has long enjoyed dynamic library support.
Dynamic libraries are the executable code that allows the latest Swift applications to bind 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, mitigating application size because external code is linked only when the language evolves.
3) Easy to read
With a 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 around conditional statements, the @ symbol, semicolons on trailing lines, nesting of method calls within square braces, and much more, has made the language more expressive and the cleanest code.
In Swift, the comma-separated list of parameters 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 creating executable applications, it is mandatory to maintain two Objective-C code files to improve build time and efficiency. However, Swift removed the legacy requirement for two code files with X-code and the LLVM compiler.
The two compilers discover dependencies, perform incremental builds, and combine the implementation files (.m) and the Objective-C header (.h) into a code file (.swift) automatically. In this way, Swift minimizes repetitive tasks, accounting, and therefore workload, giving programmers more time to focus on creating logic and improving code quality.
5) Faster and safer
In Objective-C, null pointers reduce the probability of an application crash, but they introduce many bugs that take a fair amount 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 thrown for bad code, which allows the programmer to fix the code quickly, saving time and money. Also, during runtime blocking, Swift wakes up by stopping at the line of code where the optional variable nil is used so that the error can be fixed immediately.
6) Unified with memory management
In Objective-C, automatic reference counting is supported by object-oriented code and the Cocoa APIs, but is not available for core graphics and procedural code, which in turn make programmers responsible for the memory management.
In contrast, in Swift, all memory management at compile time is handled by ARC, as it works in both object-oriented code and procedural code, and won’t require programmers to make any changes. of context. In addition, 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, 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 code same file name collision during open source project integration.
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 a 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’s more like an editor window where code is compiled and executed as soon as it’s 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
One year after its release, the modern Swift programming language was declared open source. The announcement made the language more popular and widely used on various platforms or as a back-end infrastructure.
Also, 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 pile due to the sheer number of 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.