About Swift
Swift is a new programming language for iOS and OS X apps that builds on the best of C
and Objective-C, without the constraints of C compatibility. Swift adopts safe
programming patterns and adds modern features to make programming easier, more
flexible, and more fun. Swift’s clean slate, backed by the mature and much-loved Cocoa
and Cocoa Touch frameworks, is an opportunity to reimagine how software development
works.
Swift has been years in the making. Apple laid the foundation for Swift by advancing our
existing compiler, debugger, and framework infrastructure. We simplified memory
management with Automatic Reference Counting (ARC). Our framework stack, built on
the solid base of Foundation and Cocoa, has been modernized and standardized
throughout. Objective-C itself has evolved to support blocks, collection literals, and
modules, enabling framework adoption of modern language technologies without
disruption. Thanks to this groundwork, we can now introduce a new language for the
future of Apple software development.
Swift feels familiar to Objective-C developers. It adopts the readability of Objective-C’s
named parameters and the power of Objective-C’s dynamic object model. It provides
seamless access to existing Cocoa frameworks and mix-and-match interoperability with
Objective-C code. Building from this common ground, Swift introduces many new features
and unifies the procedural and object-oriented portions of the language.
Swift is friendly to new programmers. It is the first industrial-quality systems
programming language that is as expressive and enjoyable as a scripting language. It
supports playgrounds, an innovative feature that allows programmers to experiment with
Swift code and see the results immediately, without the overhead of building and running
an app.
Swift combines the best in modern language thinking with wisdom from the wider Apple
engineering culture. The compiler is optimized for performance, and the language is
optimized for development, without compromising on either. It’s designed to scale from
“hello, world” to an entire operating system. All this makes Swift a sound future
investment for developers and for Apple.
Swift is a fantastic way to write iOS and OS X apps, and will continue to evolve with new
features and capabilities. Our goals for Swift are ambitious. We can’t wait to see what
you create with it.
