25 December, 2014

Has the Swift programming language excelled?

Earlier this year Apple had announced that it has successfully created a modern language to replace the Objective-C. Of course, the new language has brought in a number of benefits for the developers, so much so that major changes have been introduced in the way developers are building the apps for both iPads and iPhones. Till its introduction Apple was completely dependent on Objective-C which, in turn, was based on the C programming language. The introduction of this new language was good news for both developers and consumers as it have a new lease of life to the active developers’ ecosystem. It also promised to drive more innovative solutions for the apps.

How does it differ from Objective-C?
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Swift has been designed to be an easy and fast method that helps the developers in creating programs for all the Apple products, including, iPad, iPhone and Mac. The complications found in Objective-C are done away with. In its place there is a simple syntax which makes it easy for the programmers to pick up yet it feels quite familiar.

The primary area where it differs from Objective-C is its features. The ones present in Swift are more powerful. Playgrounds, for instance, is a system that enables the developers to seek out the effect of the changes introduced to their project. Making tweaks are indispensable while developing an app. This feature allows them to find out the effect on the final product. With the former language, they would wait for the program to be compiled and run before testing the code changes. This process was quite time consuming.

Another important feature of Swift is that it has done away with the former language’s stress on declaring the variable types. Currently, there is no need of specifying the codes. The compiler can easily handle all the data.

The optional bindings help in converting the value of a type as well as in finding solutions for the null check. Another powerful feature of Swift is the switch statement. There is no default fall here. The developers can easily switch through various conditions, like, elements, Boolean expressions, etc. Moreover, the functions present herein can gain control on every possible feature. Whether it is the default type or optional arguments, functions can deal with them. It can also be utilized in place of variables and types.

Quite similar to C# are the Properties that have get and set methods. To put it in a nutshell, the new language is quick to learn and is easy to read. Apple has tried to make the process of developing apps fun by introducing safe and flexible programming patterns.

How far has Swift achieved?
If you think that Swift is a sweeping departure from the existing languages, it is not so. There are certain design patterns that Apple prefers. The new one has been constructed keeping these in mind. It formalizes some patterns which have been adopted in haphazard ways. Some of the features found in the new language are already present in others. The added features are definitely good ones while those that should have been avoided have been removed, like, pointer math.

Swift comes with incremental changes from Objective-C. The vital changes are found in the fundamental syntax. If you are familiar with other languages, Swift will look familiar to as well. The brand usually attracts developers who have never worked with C before. For them, there is still a lot to learn when it comes to Swift. But at least it would not seem like an alien language. Swift also simplifies handling a number of common errors as well put a stop on the bad practices. For those who choose to write codes tersely, Swift will be of immense help. Of course, such features make it quite helpful for the developers.

Swift is a promise for better performance. However, whether it will excel is yet to be seen. Although it smoothens the process but it does not introduce anything innovative.

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