Swift developers finally have a reason to rejoice as this language releases as open source, that is, open to the public. Apple made this huge announcement on 3rd December, 2015. ‘Open Source’ is applicable to software that is accessible to anyone. And Swift, being open source is aimed at creating the best available language for use ranging from mobile and desktop apps to cloud services. Apple is inviting coders to contribute to this language to improve it in its next iteration.
The one-week old Swift is now the most popular language on GitHub with over 20,000 users starring it. iPhone application development can now be done easily with Swift, on Linux! Yes, you heard that right. It’s got exciting new features and refinements one was hunting for.
Later after the launch of this open source language, IBM introduced a free browser-based sandbox environment for programmers to get started with its coding. It was due to the availability and porting of Swift on Linux which enabled IBM to create this interesting browser based sandbox environment.
With this sandbox, developers cannot just run Swift code on a specific IDE but also on any browser over the internet. That powerful is this sandbox environment. This is best suited for students and learners to keep experimenting in a language before diving into a programming environment completely.
Why was Swift developed?
Swift was designed and developed to provide a clean and easy programming structure for coders and next gen programmers. The main goal is to allow coders to work efficiently with the OS X family and its Cocoa & Cocoa Touch framework. It uses Objective C api calls hence, Swift developers can develop apps using both languages at the same time.
Features
- Automatic memory management
- No need to type semi colons
- Tuples and multi return values
- More powerful error handling
- Compatible with Linux OS
- Browser based sandbox available
Advantages
- Safe & Secure – Having Swift open source will make developers more confident about their software before the software undergoes production. That’s because of this big move of Apple to make it open source.
- Swift is ‘Swift’ – Talking of overall performance, Swift is all set to replace C-based languages like C, C++ and Objective C. Results are faster. While other major languages are superior with their advanced features, Swift concentrates to become faster. Being fast is rare.
- Expressive – Swift is a sheer joy to use. It’s got all those modern features developers expect. Developers will have fun while coding with this open source language.
Another interesting fact about this language is that running a code into the Swift environment sends the output to another pane. This enables developers to build the next gen apps with ease and safety. Swift is all set to come to other platforms after Linux. And Apple is really proud of this move!
Best Resources to Learn Swift
Here are some websites from where you can learn swift and get references about working and all basics of swift. Here are these:
- SwiftLang.org
- Udemy
- Lynda.com
- Swift Tutorials On Treehouse
Learn Swift- More swift programming tutorials.
Arpit khandelwal is marketing manager at Reliant Tekk, a well-known iPhone Application Development company and offrer advance software solutions globally. Arpit love to provide technical updates and solutions to users which help them to understand ongoing updates in iPhone, Android world. Follow ReliantTekk on Facebbok.