What is Swift
Asked on 2024-07-30
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Swift is a modern programming language developed by Apple, designed to be fast, safe, and expressive. It is widely used for app development on Apple's platforms but is also suitable for server applications and embedded systems. Swift's key features include:
- Safety: Swift eliminates a range of bugs at compile time, making it a robust and reliable language.
- Performance: It achieves C-like performance with a low memory footprint due to automatic reference counting instead of garbage collection.
- Interoperability: Swift has built-in C and C++ interoperability, making it a compelling choice to succeed C.
- Cross-Platform: Swift can be used for server applications and embedded systems, and it is available on multiple platforms, including Linux and Windows.
Swift is used throughout Apple's software stack, from apps and system services to frameworks and firmware. It is also used for network services like private cloud compute. The language is continually evolving, with recent updates focusing on concurrency, data-race safety, and interoperability with other languages.
For a detailed introduction to Swift, you can refer to the session A Swift Tour: Explore Swift’s features and design.
Relevant Sessions
What’s new in Swift
Join us for an update on Swift. We’ll briefly go through a history of Swift over the past decade, and show you how the community has grown through workgroups, expanded the package ecosystem, and increased platform support. We’ll introduce you to a new language mode that achieves data-race safety by default, and a language subset that lets you run Swift on highly constrained systems. We’ll also explore some language updates including noncopyable types, typed throws, and improved C++ interoperability.
Platforms State of the Union 5-Minute Recap
Watch a quick recap of the newest advancements on Apple platforms.
A Swift Tour: Explore Swift’s features and design
Learn the essential features and design philosophy of the Swift programming language. We’ll explore how to model data, handle errors, use protocols, write concurrent code, and more while building up a Swift package that has a library, an HTTP server, and a command line client. Whether you’re just beginning your Swift journey or have been with us from the start, this talk will help you get the most out of the language.