Introducing Swift
Swift is an innovative new programming language for
Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax
is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready
for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current
app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.
Modern
Swift is the result of the latest research on programming languages, combined with decades of experience building Apple platforms. Named parameters brought forward from Objective-C are expressed in a clean syntax that makes APIs in Swift even easier to read and maintain.
var sortedStrings = sorted(stringArray) {
$0.uppercaseString < $1.uppercaseString
} nferred types make code cleaner and less prone to mistakes, while
modules eliminate headers and provide namespaces. Memory is managed
automatically, and you don’t even need to type semi-colons.
- Closures unified with function pointers
- Tuples and multiple return values
- Generics
- Fast and concise iteration over a range or collection
- Structs that support methods, extensions, protocols.
- Functional programming patterns, e.g.: map and filter
Interactive Playgrounds
Playgrounds make writing Swift code incredibly simple and fun.
Type a line of code and the result appears immediately. If your code
runs over time, for instance through a loop, you can watch its progress
in the timeline assistant. The timeline displays variables in a graph,
draws each step when composing a view, and can play an animated
SpriteKit scene. When you’ve perfected your code in the playground,
simply move that code into your project. Some uses for playgrounds
include:- Design a new algorithm, watching its results every step of the way
- Create new tests, verifying they work before promoting into your test suite
- Experiment with new APIs to hone your Swift coding skills
Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL). The
debugging console in Xcode includes an interactive version of the Swift
language built right in. Use Swift syntax to evaluate and interact with
your running app, or write new code to see how it works in a script-like
environment. Available from within the Xcode console, or in Terminal.
Designed for Safety
Swift eliminates entire classes of unsafe code. Variables are always initialized before use, arrays and integers are checked for overflow, and memory is managed automatically. Syntax is tuned to make it easy to define your intent — for example, simple three-character keywords define a variable (var) or constant (let).The safe patterns in Swift are tuned for the powerful Cocoa and Cocoa Touch APIs. Understanding and properly handling cases where objects are nil is fundamental to the frameworks, and Swift code makes this extremely easy. Adding a single character can replace what used to be an entire line of code in Objective-C. This all works together to make building iOS and Mac apps easier and safer than ever before.
Fast and Powerful
From its earliest conception, Swift was built to be fast. Using the incredibly high-performance LLVM compiler, Swift code is transformed into optimized native code, tuned to get the most out of modern Mac, iPhone, and iPad hardware. The syntax and standard library have also been tuned to make the most obvious way to write your code also perform the best.Swift is a successor to the C and Objective-C languages. It includes low-level primitives such as types, flow control, and operators. It also provides object-oriented features such as classes, protocols, and generics, giving Cocoa and Cocoa Touch developers the performance and power they demand.
Ready Today
You can begin using Swift code immediately to implement new
features in your app, or enhance existing ones. New Swift code co-exists
along side your existing Objective-C files in the same project, making
it easy to adopt. And when iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are released this
fall, you can submit your apps to the App Store and Mac App Store.To get started with Swift, download Xcode 6 and follow the tutorials available on the Resources tab.
Reference:
https://developer.apple.com/swift/
