what happened to objective-c?
Generated on 7/30/2024
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Objective-C has not been deprecated or removed, but its role has evolved significantly with the introduction and growth of Swift. Swift was created to be a more modern, safe, and expressive programming language, simplifying the process of writing software compared to Objective-C. Here are some key points about the transition and current state:
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Swift's Introduction and Evolution:
- Swift was introduced to provide a safer and more expressive alternative to Objective-C and C. It has been designed to be approachable for newcomers while powerful for experts (Platforms State of the Union).
- Over the years, Swift has evolved to include features like a stable ABI, concurrency model, and interoperability with C and C++ (What’s new in Swift).
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Interoperability:
- Swift maintains interoperability with Objective-C, allowing developers to incrementally adopt Swift in their existing Objective-C projects. This means that Objective-C code can still be used and maintained alongside Swift code (What’s new in Swift).
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Foundation Rewritten in Swift:
- The Foundation framework, which has a long history dating back to the beginning of Mac OS X, has been rewritten from legacy C and Objective-C into modern Swift. This rewrite aims to provide more consistent, higher quality, and better-performing APIs (What’s new in Swift).
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Swift's Adoption and Future:
- Apple is committed to adopting Swift in its C codebases, and Swift is used throughout Apple's software stack, from apps and system services to frameworks and firmware. This commitment indicates a strong future for Swift as the primary language for Apple development (Platforms State of the Union).
In summary, while Objective-C is still supported and can be used, Swift is the preferred language for new development due to its modern features, safety, and performance benefits.

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
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Platforms State of the Union 5-Minute Recap
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