the release introduced a dilemma of making
a decision between the two OOP languages- Swift and Objective-C. It
brought a lot of confusion to the development shops and created a room
for the discussions.
On a concluding note, the Swift was declared
as a winner in the years to come and when leveraged for iOS application
development, it will bring lots of benefits to the top of the table.
Take a quick look at how the Swift can get you ahead of the game:
1) Less coding required
In
Objective-C, the string manipulation, string concatenation or class
division needs more coding and involves writing repetitive statements.
In Swift, the length of coding is reduced to half with the addition of
new operators.
Also, the need to memorize the token gets
alleviated with string interpolation where variables can be directly
inserted inline to the string. The likelihood of app crashes due to
order mess up is reduced with type inferencing system.
2) Dynamic library support
The
dynamic libraries support to Swift began after the release of iOS 8.
Before this, just static libraries were there, although Mac is enjoying
the dynamic library support from a long time.
Dynamic libraries
are the executable code that allows the latest Swift apps to link the
changes or updates that new versions of Swift language bring over the
time in an automated fashion. Dynamic libraries are included within the
app bundle during download, but they are external to the app executable,
which mitigates the app size because the external code is linked only
when the language evolve.
3) Easy to read
With clean syntax,
Swift has become easier to read and write the code and look a lot like
plain English. The removal of all the legacy conventions like
parenthesis for conditional statements, @ symbol, semicolons to end
lines, nesting of method calls inside square braces and pretty more has
made the language expressive and the code cleaner.
In Swift, the
comma separated list of parameters within parathesis is used for
function and method calls to simplify the syntax, due to which the Java,
C#, C++ or Python programmers can easily read and adopt the Swift.
4) Maintainability
For
executable app creation, maintaining two code files is mandatory in the
Objective-C to enhance the build time and efficiency. But, the legacy
of two code file requirement was dropped by Swift with X-code and LLVM
compiler.
The two compliers find out the dependencies, perform
incremental builds and combine the implementation files (.m) and
Objective-C header (.h) in one code file (.Swift) automatically. This
way Swift minimizes the repetitive tasks, bookkeeping and workload
thereby the programmers will get more time to focus on logic creation,
and code quality improvement.
5) Faster and safer
In
Objective-C, the null pointers reduce the app crash probability but
introduces lots of bugs that eats away a good amount of time of the
programmers to find and fix them.
On the other hand, in Swift
language, the optional value is very clear as compiler error is
generated for the bad code, which enables the programmer to fix the code
quickly that saves the time and money. Also, during the run time crash,
Swift triggers by stopping at the line of code where nil optional
variable is used so that the error can be fixed off the bat.
6) Unified with memory management
In
Objective-C, the Automatic Reference Counting is supported within
object oriented code and Cocoa APIs, but not available for core graphics
and procedural code, which in turn make the programmers responsible for
memory management.
Instead, in Swift, all the memory management
at the compile time is handled by the ARC as it works across both object
oriented code and procedural code, and won't require programmers to do
any context switches. Additionally, the need to run garbage collector to
clean up the unused memory is not required.
7) No more name collisions
The
unavailability of namespaces support leads to code file names
collisions, which is a linker error and won't let the app to run. In
Swift, the implicit namespaces based on the target where code file
resides are given, that's why the same code file for multiple projects
can exist without letting the build to fail.
With name-space
identifiers, the classes or values can be easily differentiated and the
open source libraries, frameworks or projects can be implemented
on-the-fly, which relieve the stress of same code file name collision
during open source project integration.
8) Performance
Under
the hood, the changes are constantly made in Swift to improve the speed
at which the app logic is run. The improved performance of GEMM
algorithm by a factor of 1.4 and FFT algorithm by a factor of 8.5 are
the great instances of it. The speed up development helps in saving huge
bucks.
9) Playgrounds
With playground feature, the
programmers get the space for experiments by writing a code or creating
an algorithm and view its results on hand without having to wait uptil
the project to completely built or emulator to test it.
It's more
like editor window where the code gets compiled and run as soon as it's
written, which aids in data visualizations. All the changes made during
processing, from simple images to graphs to the finite control elements
can be viewed in the real-time.
10) Open source
A year later
after the release, the modern programming language Swift was declared
as open source. The announcement made the language more popular, and
highly used across various platforms or as a back end infrastructure.
Besides,
the feedback from the community and developers' support has made the
invaluable contribution to the improvements in the language.
Conclusion
In
2015, in the "Most loved programming language" nomination, Swift
language top the stack due to the myriad of benefits it offers over
Objective-C. The language was released by the Apple keeping the future
iOS application development in mind. The host of features has made the
iOS app developers to implement the Swift code during app development.
What
are your thoughts? Do you also find the language equally significant
for iOS development? If so, don't hold fire and set off the next project
leveraging Swift.
Mr. Michael Waugh has gained a master degree in computer science and currently work in the iOS application development company
as a senior iOS developer. He has built the bevy of iOS apps of
different genres which are the exact reflection of the clients' needs.
He is passionate about computer graphics, iOS app designs, and user interaction.
Article Source:
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