What Do You Need to Know About Swift Development?

Swift is Apple’s programming language. It is a modern language that is easy to code and has low maintenance. It is a quick and powerful open-source language that is in demand. Swift is a secure language for app development with great performance and an in-built error handling model.

Ever thought of building an iOS app, where you can conceptualize your ideas and easily make them work. If yes, then Swift technology is your solution. Swift is Apple’s programming language, for iPads, Macs, and watchOS.  Apps like Slack, Uber, Lyft, and many others use Swift technology for developing the iOS mobile application.

Swift technology has made a significant change in iOS development. You can create iOS apps with no frequent app crashes. This is why making an iOS app these days is not complicated at all.

Swift is a highly intuitive language introduced in 2014. It includes system programming, mobile apps, desktop apps, and cloud services. It helps you create interfaces and interactions in a much easier way.

Swift is a powerful and intuitive iOS programming language. It is an international language with many projects migrating to this language. Swift is redefining our understanding of iOS mobile app development. Swift has great capabilities. Here are the reasons to discover why?

Easy to code

Generally, programming languages require complicated codes and with complex features, it becomes a headache to maintain comment lines. Swift is more efficient and quicker. With less code, you can do wonders with this technology.

Swift added new features with 15% less code. This is providing some foundation for breakthrough innovations where you can use a universal clipboard. Here, it enables you to copy and paste images, texts, and drawings from iOS to macOS.

Swift provides Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL) type platform for learning as well as for experimenting with fast prototyping, making your app more obtainable. It is a win for businesses because now they can train their employees working in IT quite easily.

Since fewer lines of code do complicated tasks, chances of code reusability increase, making code easy to write and read. This helps give more time to planning and enhancing the app quality, which helps you run your app effortlessly.

Recommended for you: Python vs Swift: Strong and Weak Sides of Both & What to Choose?

Modern language with minimal maintenance

Swift is a new approach that works with all Apple platforms. It is the latest research programming language with clean syntax, and an easy read and maintain API. Like no semicolons or brackets are needed thus, clean code, and less prone to mistakes.

It was created as an alternative to C-based language for Apple gadgets. Also, it has automatic memory management with minimum memory usage. Isn’t this an ideal programming language?

Swift provides language stability which is a prerequisite for enterprise adoption. Apple is making the youth learn this language with the help of an interactive and educational game called Swift playground that the youth can access from anywhere, like from school or from home.

Quick and powerful

Swift has flexible and reusable functions on which you can work. It also has a native error handling system, which helps maximize iOS app performance. Swift is faster than Objective-C, which was used before Swift technology. It requires less coding.

Swift decreases the size of mobile apps and helps save space. It is quick to adapt, as it is easy to learn and find the code on GitHub. It helps to forestall blunders while creating your app during runtime itself.

Swift is a language that can be used for both client-side and server-side development. The constant challenge involved with mobile apps is that frontend and backend development are normally separated which creates friction for the app to function. Thus, it functions slowly, impacting its experience, security as well as transactional capabilities.

Secure language

Everyone wants to make their app secure. By default, Swift is designed for security purposes.

Mobile application security is a serious issue these days and so, security is important.

Thus, businesses need to make this a priority whether its customers’ personal information or their payment details, every kind of data needs to be protected and secured perfectly.

Swift has an improved typing system. Due to error tracking capability and short feedback loops, coders spot the errors while writing the code itself. So, it gets solved instantly with fewer crashes in the app making it less problematic and more stable to use. Also, Swift makes sure that the errors are identified before the entire development of the mobile app is completed.

This feature makes Swift a more secure language which further helps to increase customer retention and loyalty.

You may like: Best Programming Language for iOS App Development.

Open-source language and in demand

Swift is a concise language, reducing the cost of programming and making it much faster and more efficient, with higher code reusability. It is easy to track bugs, upgrade codes and create an email list all at once. Thus, it is more in demand.

It was declared open source in 2015. It allows programmers to test new algorithms without creating any fully developed iOS app. Also, feedback comes with the data visualization which enhances the speed of development.

Swift being an open-source language makes it even more popular as users do not need to pay anything. This is an added advantage for both small and medium scale businesses as it saves you the development cost. Also, these apps can be easily customized, so developers can customize them as per their requirements.

Also, it takes feedback from its community which also helps improve its performance. It has better readability and is simple to modify as it has less code and thus, reducing the cost of developing apps and overall developing time.

Great performance with the error handling model

Great language means nothing if it has low-performance value or has to deal with many errors. Swift does not face this issue. It has great performance and has an in-built error handling model.

Since data management is done faster, it helps in optimizing the native code which increases its speed. It uses high-order functions and generics to make code clean and reusable, saving you time.

Swift is highly interactive, and coders can see the output of their work while coding itself. Any coding error can be identified immediately and amended during the coding process. Also, if your code contains loops then the timeline is calculated in the timeline panel where variables are calculated. Making it easy for the coders to optimize it there and then itself.

Less code leads to fewer errors which makes the code incredibly light thus, improving its performance.

Objective-C was the main programming language used before for iOS development which lacked the ability to evolve. Swift has an advantage over speed as well. It is much faster than Objective-C.

Also, dynamic libraries help during runtime. This allows apps to be updated easily to the future releases of Swift technology. These dynamics libraries are directly uploaded to the memory, making its size smaller and making it a lighter app and this increases its performance.

Cons of Swift development

Well, there are so many reasons to build your app on Swift. But this language is not perfect. Many businesses and developers are very cautious to switch to this language.

Swift technology also has some cons that you should keep in mind while working on it. Swift is still an evolving and young language. Objective-C was used in the market since the 1980s. Swift is just 7 years old. Thus, it leads to frequent updates making it difficult for the developers to be updated and make the app compatible with all the previous versions.

It has a limited talent pool. No doubt the Swift language is growing with light speed, but it still has a small community when compared to other renowned platforms. Thus, it is difficult to find experienced developers.

Also, it has poor interoperability with third-party apps. Due to continuous updates, it gets difficult for the developers to find the correct tools to help them perform certain tasks. So, autocomplete, syntax errors, refactoring tools, and compilers are the arrears where Swift developers face issues. It has incomplete cross-platform support. And it also lacks support for previous iOS versions as well.

You may also like: 10 Most Popular Programming Languages to Learn.

Conclusion

Choosing the right language majorly depends on the type of app required. Swift is an evolved version of Objective-C with new features allowing developers to be more creative and free by making the app more secure and reliable.

Swift uses radical user experience, thereby taking your business to higher levels. It helps your application run flawlessly on iOS, watchOS, and OS X. It leverages the power of the open source. You can consider Swift as one of the best and most prominent programming languages today.

Swift is constantly evolving and an easy-to-code language, it is also easy to access. It is a feature-rich and robust programming language. Thus, making it more approachable and easier for developers. Swift can help enterprises to develop the mobile app they always wanted.

This article is written by Maulik Shah. Maulik is the CEO of BiztechCS, an Android app developer from India. He likes to explore beyond his comfort zone. When it comes to writing for the blog, his contribution is priceless. No one else on the team can bring the deep industry knowledge to articles that he has. However, his door is always open, and he is generous with sharing that knowledge.

Disclosure: Some of our articles may contain affiliate links; this means each time you make a purchase, we get a small commission. However, the input we produce is reliable; we always handpick and review all information before publishing it on our website. We can ensure you will always get genuine as well as valuable knowledge and resources.