Swift is a modern programming language created by Apple for iOS, macOS, and other platforms. Designed by Chris Lattner, it combines safety, performance, and expressiveness, replacing Objective-C as Apple’s primary development language.
Origins
Lattner started Swift development at Apple in 2010, drawing on his LLVM expertise. Swift was announced at WWDC 2014 and made open source in 2015.
Key Features
Swift modernized Apple platform development:
- Type safety: Catch errors at compile time
- Optionals: Explicit null handling
- Automatic Reference Counting: Memory management without GC
- Protocol-oriented: Composition over inheritance
- Playgrounds: Interactive code exploration
Design Philosophy
Swift balances competing goals:
- Safe by default, unsafe when needed
- Fast like C, expressive like scripting languages
- Modern features without abandoning performance
- Interoperable with existing Objective-C code
Impact
Swift transformed Apple development:
- Faster to learn than Objective-C
- Safer code with fewer crashes
- Server-side Swift expanded its reach
- Influenced other language designs