What's new with Swift?

What's New with Swift?

At WWDC 2024, several exciting updates and features were introduced for Swift, marking its 10th anniversary. Here are the key highlights:

1. Swift 6 Language Mode:

   • Data Race Safety: Swift 6 introduces a new language mode that provides data race safety guarantees, which is crucial for writing correct concurrent programs. This feature ensures that your code is safe and maintainable (What’s new in Swift).
   • Non-Copyable Types: Swift 6 introduces non-copyable types, which means that all Swift types, whether value types or reference types, are copyable by default, but you can now define types that cannot be copied (What’s new in Swift).

2. Embedded Swift:

   • A new language subset called Embedded Swift has been introduced, which can run on highly constrained systems like operating system kernels and microcontrollers (What’s new in Swift).

3. Swift Testing:

   • An all-new testing framework named Swift Testing has been introduced. It features expressive APIs that make it simple to write tests and is built from the ground up for Swift (Platforms State of the Union).

4. C++ Interoperability:

   • Swift 6 continues to improve interoperability with C++, making it easier to integrate Swift with existing C++ codebases (What’s new in Swift).

5. Concurrency Improvements:

   • Enhancements to concurrency, including improvements to data race checking and complete concurrency checking in Swift 5.10, have been made to ensure safety and performance (What’s new in Swift).

6. Swift's New Space on GitHub:

   • The Swift project will be moving to a new organization on GitHub (swiftlang), which will include the Swift Compiler foundation and many more Swift ecosystem packages (What’s new in Swift).

7. Swift's Evolution and Community:

   • Reflecting on Swift's journey over the past decade, the language has evolved significantly, with major milestones such as the introduction of Swift Package Manager, the concurrency model with async/await, and distributed actors (What’s new in Swift).

Relevant Sessions

• What’s new in Swift
• Platforms State of the Union
• A Swift Tour: Explore Swift’s features and design

These sessions provide a comprehensive overview of the new features and improvements in Swift, making it an even more powerful and versatile programming language.