Programming can be a real pain, especially if you start with some archaic language. For beginners, it is better to take on something more modern, such as Python, Ruby or Swift. The latter appeared in the public domain only in 2014, so many programmers are skeptical about its study. But if you’re looking your way, leave skepticism aside. Here are some great reasons that will convince you.
Mac and iOS
In 2016 alone, the App Store raised about $ 20 billion for developers from apps on the Mac and iOS platforms. Since Apple takes 30% of the App Store profit, the market can be estimated at $ 28.5 billion.
A lot of money! And you can take your piece of that pie. Swift language is used to create applications for Mac and iOS, acting as a possible replacement for Objective-C. The latter, although actively used, is obsolete and has no future after studying Swift, you can create applications for both platforms at once and earn very good money on it.
Swift is Great for Fast Development
When the Apple team was developing a replacement for Objective-C, they had two main requirements:
- It should be easy to learn.
- It should help speed up the application development cycle.
As a result, Swift has all the attributes of a modern programming language and is definitely superior to Objective-C on all fronts. Main Features:
- There are no undefined or uninitialized variables.
- No errors with the dimensions of your arrays.
- No overflow errors.
- Explicit handling of nil (null) values.
- Automatic memory management.
This way, you spend more time implementing ideas and less time worrying about possible bugs, crashes, and conflicts in your code. In addition, the language overcame syntactic verbosity in Objective-C, which made writing and reading easier. The result is much less time to write similar code in Swift.
Swift is Productive
Despite the fact that Swift is a high-level language focused on quick learning, it is really fast. According to Apple, Swift is up to 2.6 times faster than Objective-C and almost 8.4 times faster than Python 2.7. The ultimate goal is to make the language faster than C++.
Importantly, Swift is not just fast, but also packed with modern language features that allow you to write truly functional code. Among them are:
- generics;
- circuit;
- tuples;
- multiple refunds;
- iterators;
- built-in FP templates.
Swift is Safe
Introducing many of these features, as well as improving the syntax, makes Swift safer than Objective-C. For example, improved memory management means fewer opportunities for unauthorized access to data. Switching to the wrong parts of memory, erroneous data modification is also complicated. Another example: more efficient error handling significantly reduces the number of failures and the occurrence of critical scenarios. Unpredictable behavior is minimized.
Swift is Free and Open
A year after the introduction of Swift, Apple made it an open source language. Although this is not a unique phenomenon in the modern world, such generosity is rare for an Apple company. Typically, Apple pushes proprietary technologies to highlight its own uniqueness. But the move with Swift was justified and fruitful.
As with any other open source language, Swift is entirely in the hands of the community. Users can suggest ways to fix bugs and improve features, and help move apps beyond Mac and iOS. After all, users are the main driving force behind the language.
Rapid Growth and High Demand
According to the GitHub Octoverse 2017 report, Swift is the 13th most popular language in open source projects.
TNW reported in 2016 that demand for Swift employees increased by 600 percent. By the end of the year, Upwork reported that Swift had become the second fastest-growing skill in the freelance job market. And in the Stack Overflow 2017 survey, Swift became the fourth most popular language among active developers.
Application development today is one of the most “hot” professions on the stock exchange. If you choose Swift as a career foundation, you will definitely not regret it.
Swift – the Future of Apple
Apple has no reason to replace Swift with another language in the next decade. Add to this 4-year progress, both in terms of development and popularity, consistently growing sales of “Apple” devices and the expansion of the line. Based on these facts, it is safe to say that the need for Swift developers will grow.
If you want to work with Apple, want to be a part of their crazy financial reports – you need Swift. It’s time to start learning. You know where to start.
References
- Apple’s Swift programming language: Cheat sheet – TechRepublic
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What is the Swift programming language? – Lena Charles
