Swift is an Apple programming language launched in 2014, and it enables you to create apps for the Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. Most of the Apps you find on Apple devices are built through Swift. Big names such as Spotify, Instagram, and YouTube are some of the few names that use Swift for their Apps.

Why You Should Learn Swift Code

Swift has a lot of future potential for iOS

It might seem like one of the latest languages in town since it was released in 2014. However, from its launch, the language has grown up to become one of the most used programming languages worldwide.

Based on the Index from TIOBE, Swift has a record of being the 12th most sought programming language. Being among the top programming language was verified by TIOBEX through the traffic on search engines.

The usefulness of Swift code

It is usable in developing applications for ios devices; examples are the iPhone and Apple Watch. It is the contemporary replacement for C-based languages, which are formerly used for developing apps for Apple devices.

A large percentage of the applications you will find on the App Store nowadays are created with Swift. In reality, other than legacy apples, many of the applications for Apple devices are written in Swift code. And this is because Swift remains the best language for Apple development.

Best IDEs you can use for Swift

Atom

Atom is open-source, and the code editor is compatible with different operating systems. It features a smart autocompletion, which allows you to write code faster with flexible autocomplete. It includes an integrated package manager, which streamlines searching and installing new packages or creating your packages in the IDE. You can easily divide the Atom interface into sections to compare and edit code between files. Behind the scenes, Atom is a desktop app built with the integration of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Node.js. It operates using Electron, a framework for building cross-platform applications with web technologies.

AppCode

AppCode is an integrated development environment for developing iOS/macOS software. This IDE has many features, for example, when using AppCode to write code, static analysis or any supported language will highlight any errors or warnings, and provide quick-fix suggestions while typing, navigate to the classes, functions, or symbols in the quick code, and check only those related uses during the search. AppCode works with XCTest, Quick, Kiwi, Catch, Boost. Google Test testing and Test framework offer an integrated Test runner and a powerful user interface to check the results. It provides a high-quality unified interface for the most popular VCS, Subversion, Git, GitHub, Mercurial, and many more.

Xcode

This IDE is important in Apple's development experience and is an extremely efficient environment for building apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad, WatchOS, and TVOS. Xcode makes code writing easier because it offers code completion & folding, syntax highlighting, and message bubbles displaying warnings, errors, and other contextual information and code. The powerful open-source LLVM compiler for C, C ++, and Objective-C has been integrated into Xcode and can be used through the terminal. Also, if an encoding error occurs, Xcode will immediately generate a warning, and a single keyboard shortcut will immediately resolve the issue.

SublimeText

SublimeText is an advanced text editor for code, markup, and prose. It is a cross-platform source code editor that supports different programming and markup languages. It features "Go To Anything" for quick navigation to a file, icon, or line and a command palette keyboard that uses adaptive settings to get any command quickly, including editing at the same time. SublimeText features a Swift Sublime package that must be installed using the package control for the Swift programming language.

Pros

Fast development process

As a concise and expressive language featuring simple syntax and grammar, Swift is not difficult to read and write. It is straightforward, which means that it requires less code to complete a similar task than Objective-C. Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) performs all tracking works and managing application memory usage, so developers don't have to spend time and effort doing it manually. Therefore, less time is required to create iOS apps using Swift.

Easier to extend the product and the team

Besides rapid development time, you can also get reliable products that can be extended with new features as necessary. Therefore, Swift projects are easier to extend. Also, the fact that Apple favors Swift over Objective-C should be a serious future consideration.

In addition, Swift allows more developers to be added to the team as needed: integration is relatively fast because of the simplicity and clarity of the codebase. Swift's syntax is considered to be similar to natural English and easy to read by new hires.

Increased safety and productivity

As the name implies, Swift is built to be fast. With an emphasis on performance and speed, the language was originally designed to surpass its predecessor. The first launched claimed a 40% performance improvement over Objective-C. This has been proven in the past years by various tests and trials conducted by individual developers. Also, there are various ways to optimize your Swift code for better performance.

Cons

Lacks good interoperability with third-party tools and IDEs

Due to frequent updates, it is often difficult to get the right tools to help you with specific tasks. In addition, it has no official Apple IDE, XCode, in terms of tools and support for Swift has some drawbacks. Developers often report problems with syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and compilers.

Swift Is Still Young

As mentioned in the introduction, Swift was launched in 2014, which seems like a long time ago. But the language itself is only five years old compared to Objective-C, which was released in the 1980s. And the latest update has brought ABI stability to all platforms, reverse compatibility of Swift versions, and updated documentation. These are big steps in making Swift more matured. However, from a wider perspective, Swift only has native libraries, tools and it's bound to be unstable after each release.

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