Swift is applied to create applications for Mac and iOS acting as a possible replacement for Objective-C. The latter, though actively used but morally obsolete with no future. Having studied Swift, you’ll be able to create applications at once for both platforms and very well to make money on it.
Swift is suitable for quick development
When the Apple team developed the Objective-C replacement, they had two basic requirements:
- It should be easy to learn.
- Should help accelerate the development cycle of applications.
As a result, Swift has all the attributes of the modern programming language and definitely outperforms Objective-C on all fronts. Key Features:
- There are no undefined or uninitialized variables.
- There are no errors with the dimensions of the arrays.
- There are no overflow errors.
- Explicit processing of nil (null) values.
You’ll spend more time implementing ideas and less worrying about possible errors, crashes and conflicts of your code. In addition, the language overcame the syntactic verbosity in Objective-C, which simplified the writing and reading. The result time wise, it will take less time to write a similar code in Swift.
Swift is a manufacturer
Despite the fact that Swift is a high-level language, focused on early learning, it is really fast. According to Apple, Swift is 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 ++.
It is important that Swift is not just quick but also filled with modern language functions that allow you to write truly functional code. Among them:
- generics;
- closures;
- tuples;
- multiple returns;
- Iterators;
- built-in templates.
And many other things.
Safe language
The introduction of many of these features as well as the improvement of the syntax, makes Swift safer than Objective-C.
For example, improving memory handling means fewer opportunities for unauthorized access to data. Transition to the wrong parts of memory, erroneous data changes are also complicated. Another example: more efficient error handling significantly reduces the number of failures and emergence of critical scenarios. Unpredictable behavior is minimized.
Free and open
A year after the appearance of Swift, Apple made it an open source language. Although this is not a unique phenomenon for the modern world, for the “apple” company such generosity is a rarity. Typically, Apple pushes proprietary technology to highlight its own uniqueness. But the step with Swift has become 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 functions and help to transfer applications outside of Mac and iOS. In the end, users are the main driving force of the language
Fast growth and strong demand
According to the GitHub Octoverse 2017 report. Swift is the 13th most popular among languages in open source projects.
The TNW resource in 2016 reported that the demand for Swift employees increased by 600 percent. By the end of the year, Upwork reported that Swift was the second fastest growing skill on the freelance labor market. Stack Overflow poll 2017 Swift became the fourth most favorite language among active developers.
Glassdoor reports an average basic salary for iOS Developer in the amount of 107 thousand dollars.
Application development today is one of the most “hot” professions on the exchange. By choosing Swift as the foundation of a career, you definitely will not regret it.
Apple future in Swift
Apple has no reason to replace Swift with another language in the next decade. Add here 4-year progress both in terms of development and popularity, the ever-increasing sales of “apple” devices and the expansion of the line. Based on these facts, we can say with confidence that the need for Swift developers will grow.
If you want to work with Apple, want to be part of their crazy financial reports then you need Swift. It’s time to start training.